BMW Electrified Car Sales Reached 4% in Western Europe in June; Plug-in EV Sales in June Doubled in China; Samsung Interested in Buying BYD Stock; Future Mobility Aims to Introduce its Automated Electric Car by 2020
BMW Electrified Car Sales Reached 4% in Western Europe in June
BMW released sales result for June. The company sees increasing demand for its i and iPerformance cars. In Western Europe, 4% of its sales went to electrified cars. In particular, the percentage was 14.9% in the Netherlands and 13.2% in Scandinavia.
Moreover, as the new i3 94A is near launch this month, the number of pre-orders in Europe is reaching 5,000.
Plug-in EV Sales in June Doubled in China
According to Automotive News China, almost 44,000 plug-in EVs were sold in June in China, a 107% increase from one year ago. Among them, about 34,000 units were pure electric cars and the other 10,000 were plug-in hybrids.
For the first 6 months of this year, China has seen a 127% increase in plug-in EV sales, to 170,000 units.
Last year, 331,092 plug-in EVs were sold in China and 114,022 were sold in the US.
Samsung Interested in Buying BYD Stock
According to Bloomberg, BYD disclosed that Samsung is in talk with the company regarding buying its stock. The size of this transaction is not disclosed at the moment.
Samsung sees BYD’s growth potential and plans on strategic partnership on EV technologies. This potential move is believed to benefit Samsung’s business in auto semiconductor.
Samsung SDI plant in China did not yet manage to be on a list of battery suppliers with which the electric cars are qualified for government subsidies. The result is affecting Samsung’s EV battery sales there. For example, the automaker JAC is reported to slow down the production of its iEV6s electric car, which uses Samsung battery.
BYD is already on the list of qualified battery suppliers. Warren Bufffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns 10% of BYD.
Future Mobility Aims to Introduce its Automated Electric Car by 2020
According to Reuters, CEO Carsten Breitfeld said the Chinese startup was targeting year 2020 for its first electric car with fully self-driving feature. The car will be a mass-produced model, coming from a platform developed for multiple models.
The company is backed by Tencent and Hon Hai and was closing the Series A round. Breitfeld, before joining Future Mobility, was leading the BMW i division. The core team of the division also came with him to work for the startup.