It appears that Volkswagen is forming a new EV partnership in China, split from its collaboration with CPeng Motors. As per the report, Volkswagen is in talks with Hangzhou-based EV startup Leapmotor. This is intended in order to outsource its technology for its Jetta brand.
Also, as claimed by the media report from Cailian, Volkswagen’s Jetta brand is holding talks with Leapmotor to use its technology with the motive of “economical electric cars.”
The person who is aware of the matter told to reporters that FAW (Volkswagen’s JV partner) released an internal document stating that, “After Xaiopeng, Volkswagen’s Jetta brand is negotiating cooperation with Leapmotor.” Therefore, if the deal came to a conclusion. Then further it is expected to distinguish from the partnership with XPeng Motors (Xaipeng).
In addition to this, VW will make use of XPeng’s Edward platform. The same was used in the G9 and P7 models, in order to launch two new electric models. The automaker invested $700 million for approx 5% stake in the Chinese EV maker. Audi and Chines state-owned maker SAIC also verified this association a week ago to speed up EV development in the region.
Volkswagen negotiating another EV partnership
Volkswagen’s new EV collaboration is predicted to be very similar to the Audi-SAIC collaboration instead of the XPeng deal. Believing on to the report, “This time FAW-Volkswagen is very likely to ‘buy out’ a certain generation of zero running platform technology.”
Since Jetta was widely recognized as a popular Volkswagen brand. While the automaker split it off in 2019 and further classified it as a sub-brand. By that time, Jetta has coped, in order to gain traction as the market moves to EVs. When talking about its numbers then Jetta’s sales fell by 13.48% to 146,900 units last year.
In this generation of the modern EV era, customers are diverting toward software-defined intelligent vehicles instead not just making their purchases strictly on looks. According to one of the industry experts:
If the cooperation with Leapmotor comes true, Volkswagen will fully rely on the technical strength of Chinese car companies to make up for its shortcomings in the field of intelligent driving.
They continued, “Volkswagen urgently needs the new energy vehicle technology of Chinese car companies to reverse disadvantages of the market.”
