VW, BYD to Explore Ways to Team Up on Plug-In Hybrid and All-Electric Vehicles
By Scott Doggett May 26, 2009
Volkswagen AG will consider forming a partnership with China's BYD Auto in the area of hybrids and zero-emissions all-electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries, Europe's largest carmaker said on Monday.
The announcement comes exactly one month after we reported that BYD and VW confirmed that they will cooperate on the development of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Volkswagen is the first major industrial partner for BYD, a battery specialist and the fledgling maker of the F6DM plug-in hybrid. Last September, BYD sold a 10 percent stake to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway for $230 million.
"Particularly for the Chinese market, potential partners such as BYD could support us in quickly expanding our activities," Ulrich Hackenberg, head of research and development at the VW brand, said in a statement.
In addition to Volkswagen, BYD is also talking to Ford Motor Co. and another European automaker about similar arrangements, The Wall Street Journal reported today (subscription required), citing people familiar with the VW-BYD negotiations.
The status of those negotiations, however, was not immediately clear. "We are always in discussions with many suppliers as a standard course of our business, but we have nothing to share at this time," Whitney Small, a Ford spokeswoman in Bangkok, told the Journal.
VW's Growing Electric Alliance
The VW-BYD deal, signed last week but announced on Monday, represents the third such partnership in the area of electric vehicles for VW, which already has signed letters of intent with Sanyo Electric Co. in May last year and Toshiba Corp. this February.
Carmakers are racing to develop next-generation lithium-ion batteries capable of making electric vehicles a viable alternative to cars equipped with combustion engines.
The environmental benefits depend on whether the power is generated from renewable sources such as solar energy. Nevertheless, electric cars are considered to be the best near-term solution to carbon-free driving.
Last week German rival car and truckmaker Daimler announced it had bought nearly 10 percent of Tesla Motors, expanding on its existing partnership with the electric sports-car maker.
Scott Doggett, Contributor
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