Daimler AG (Germany) and BYD Co Ltd. (China) have renamed their joint venture to Denza, rearranging their shares in it to 10% and 90%, respectively.
The companies have been partners on the Chinese market for over a decade now, having founded BYD Daimler New Technology Co., Ltd. (BDNT for short) in 2010 with equal (50/50) ownership. This joint venture has now been renamed to Denza, and Daimler only owns 10% of the shares.
BDNT was originally founded to design and produce the most technologically advanced vehicles. Seven years ago, the company used the Mercedes-Benz B-Class platform to release Denza EV, a battery sedan with 352 km (218.7 miles) of range. It updated it later to a new version called Denza 500, and followed up in 2019 with a hybrid called Denza X, which is featured in the gallery and the video here. Based on the BYD Tang platform, the car sports a Mercedes exterior and commands 586 PS (578 hp / 431 kW).
Making Denza cars under the BDNT brand enabled BYD to study the needs of the market, while Daimler AG used its factory in China as a test ground for proving the viability of its carbon neutrality strategy. By the end of the decade, the automaker plans to switch to electric vehicle production completely.
In turn, BYD pursues a strategy called ‘7+4’, which envisions the introduction of seven basic and four special electric vehicle categories, examples including sedans, taxi cabs, passenger buses and more.