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Economy

Mercedes Set To Launch New Electric Car In China

The first ever Sino-German car is being launched in China by Daimler, but won't be a Mercedes brand. As a foreign business, Daimler had to pick a Chinese partner to launch the all-electric auto, opting for BYD (Build Your Dreams), the world’s lar

BYD is well-established in the Chinese market
BYD is well-established in the Chinese market

*NEWSBITES

Olivier Boulay heads the new Mercedes design studio in Beijing charged with developing its first Sino-German car. But the car can't be a Mercedes: for a foreign business like Daimler to be able to produce in China, it has to have a Chinese majority partner.

Daimler picked BYD (Build Your Dreams), the world's largest producer of batteries, with 60% of global market share, and one of China's fastest growing companies. The planned joint venture electric car of "Shenzhen BYD Daimler New Technology Co. Ltd." should function exclusively on electricity. It will be relatively narrow, and high, so as to be able to navigate narrow city streets with ease.

Daimler‘s first car designed in China, made in China, and targeting a Chinese clientele is being developed with funding from the Chinese central government. The state will also subsidize purchases of the electro-mobile to the tune of 7,000 euros. The governments of some of the country's largest cities will double that to encourage people to buy the car.

For a sales price of just over 20,000 euros, Chinese buyers are expecting a flexible multi-purpose vehicle. Boulay is supervising a dozen designers in the Beijing studio as they work on the exterior and the interior design of the as-yet nameless, five-seat car.

The car should be ready for presentation at the Beijing Motor Show in the spring of 2012. Mercedes technicians are in charge of all structural, safety and handling details as well as quality management during production, which will take place at a BYD factory in Shenzhen.

After launch, the Sino-German electric car is expected to be sold only in China, but with modifications could later be put on the export market. But we're not there yet, says BYD CEO Wang Chuangfu. "Our home market is so huge," he says, "it's enough for us in a first step to serve the Chinese market alone."

Read the full story in German by Jürgen Zöllter

Photo - Wikipedia

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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Migrant Lives

Latin America's Migrants Trying To Reach The U.S.: Risk It All, Fail, Repeat

Searching for a safe home, many Latin American migrants are forced to try, time after time, getting turned away, and then risk everything again.

Photograph of thousands of migrants marching  to the US-Mexican border under the rain.

06 June 2022, Mexico, Tapachula: Thousands of migrants set off north on foot under the rain.

Daniel Diaz/ZUMA
Alejandra Pataro

BUENOS AIRES — With gangsters breathing down his neck, Maynor sold all of his possessions in Honduras, took his wife and three kids aged 11, 8 and 5, and set out northwards. He was leaving home for good, for the third time.

"I had to leave my country several times," he said, "but was deported." He was now trying to enter the U.S. again, but the family had become stuck in Mexico: "Things are really, really bad for us right now."

Migration in Latin America is no longer a linear process, taking migrants from one place to another. It goes in several directions. Certain routes will take you to one country as a stopover to another, but really, it's more a lengthy ordeal than a layover, and the winners are those who can find that receptive, welcoming community offering work and a better life.

The aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) calls this an international, multidirectional phenomenon that may include recurring trips to and from a home country.

Marisol Quiceno, MSF's Advocacy chief for Latin America, told Clarín that migrants "are constantly looking for opportunities and for food security, dignified work opportunities (and) healthcare access." These are the "minimum basics of survival," she said, adding that people will keep looking if they did not find them the first time around.

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