HAIKOU, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) — Amid rising geopolitical headwinds and intense market competition, German carmakers bet on Chinese tech partners to fast-track their electrification and smart-vehicle shift.
At the three-day 2025 World New Energy Vehicle Congress (WNEVC), starting on Saturday, Sean Green, president and CEO of BMW Group Region China, showcased the veteran carmaker’s partnerships with China’s domestic leaders in batteries, driver-assist systems, and AI foundation models.
During a seminar presentation to attendees in the global automotive industry, Green highlighted joint projects with battery giant CATL to co-design large cylindrical cells, a partnership with Chinese self-driving startup Momenta to develop driver-assist software, and a collaboration to integrate Alibaba’s AI foundation model and Huawei’s intelligent-vehicle stack into BMW cars.
“This goes beyond conventional partnerships,” and it forms “a symbiotic ecosystem that benefits both sides,” said Green. “Technology openness is the valuable experience we took from China’s success,” he added.
In China, BMW has its largest production base and R&D team outside Germany, with over 3,000 engineers across R&D centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang and Nanjing, as well as three dedicated software development companies.
“China is highly competitive,” said Oliver Zipse, chairman of the board of management of BMW AG, in an earlier interview with Xinhua. Yet “the biggest innovations we see come out of China,” and “combining our strengths allows us to develop products that set new standards globally.”
Daniel Navarro Rios, executive vice president of Mercedes-Benz Group China, stated at Saturday’s seminar on China-German collaboration that the company has established partnerships across the Chinese academic and industrial sectors. It teams up with Tencent, ByteDance and Tsinghua University.
“We are leveraging China’s dynamic ecosystem. We build a strong R&D network in China, and we are driving innovation at China speed,” said Navarro Rios.
Zhang Lan, vice president of Volkswagen Group China, said the Chinese and German collaborative teams are rewriting the auto giant’s “China speed” — “not just streamlined processes, but a full-scale upgrade in tech synergy and decision-making efficiency,” citing its partnerships with SAIC Motor and Xpeng Motors.
She admitted China is the world’s fiercest market. Brands must deliver high-spec, competitively priced cars, stay profitable amid intense competition, and continue to innovate rapidly.
“Cooperation and competition are two sides of the same coin,” Hildegard Muller, president of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, observed in talking of the commercial rivalry between Chinese and German automakers.
Muller stressed that the two industries are highly complementary, a dynamic that “enables both sides to accelerate innovation and achieve outcomes greater than the sum of the parts.”
German firms bring deep expertise in automotive engineering and safety standards. At the same time, their Chinese counterparts excel at large-scale market rollouts, rapid product iterations, and nationwide charging-infrastructure build-outs, according to Muller.
Wan Gang, president of China Association for Science and Technology, echoed in his speech that the automotive industry has always been a globally competitive sector, where competition is a market norm and serves to meet consumers’ demands.
In Muller’s perspective, protectionism in the auto sector inflicts far greater harm: tariffs jeopardize the international division of labor, a system she called “a great success story that must be preserved.”
With the theme “Industrial Transformation and Sustainable Development,” the 2025 WNEVC was held in Haikou, the capital of south China’s Hainan Province, from Sept. 27 to 29. ■