Beijing Auto seeking Japan partner for all-electric vehicles

Shanghai, July 19 (Gasgoo.com) Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co (BAIC), China's fifth-biggest carmaker, will organize a delegation of more than 20 people at the end of this month to visit some Japanese auto parts suppliers for the purpose of seeking a partner there to jointly develop all-electric vehicles, media reported yesterday.

Xu Heyi, President of BAIC, is said to have visited Japan for a couple of times earlier trying to seek cooperation opportunities. The auto parts suppliers reviewed by him are mainly some OE suppliers who have been doing new energy vehicle business with the vehicle manufacturers. Although lining up at the same starting line, China is still far lagging behind Japan in the development of the automotive electronics products, BAIC said.

If we fail to keep pace with foreign auto parts suppliers in developing car electronic products, we will probably not be willing to equip the future all-electric vehicles with the auto parts manufactured by ourselves, an engineer from BAIC's new energy vehicle company said.

At present, BAIC has established a three-square-kilometer industry park in Beijing's Daxing District and a few auto parts suppliers have settled down there. In the near future, the place will become an integrated production base for new energy vehicles, with R&D, testing, production to be conducted, and the charging stations and other supporting facilities for eclectic vehicles to be built there, the engineer added.

In 2011, the Beijing government will put 3,500 all-electric vehicles on the roads for public use.