CHINA: BMW CEO Urges China Engagement, Geely Eyes UK Production and GWM’s Chair Talks Quality | 20 Feb 2026

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And Great Will Motors chair talks quality.

Plus stay tuned, later in the show I'll tell you how Gang Feng Lithium,

a battery supplier to Chang'an and Hyundai,

has entered mass production of hybrid solid liquid batteries.

Welcome to EV News China, the podcast dedicated to the world's largest EV market.

Every day I bring you headlines, insights, and analysis

from the heart of China's booming EV industry

and decode how fast moving developments in the East shape the global landscape.

Let's start with BMW's Chief Executive Oliver Zipsa,

warning that Europe risks future growth if it ignores China

and the world's largest EV market.

He made the case for engagement ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Mertz's

first state visit to Beijing.

Zipsa will join a business delegation travelling with Mertz to China next week.

The group also includes CEOs of Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz.

Mertz said he will seek strategic partnerships during the China visit.

Zipsa called the trip a strong signal for dialogue and cooperation

and told Reuters that global challenges can only be solved by working together.

The timing matters, the US President Donald Trump has ignited a global trade war,

which has given European governments new and fresh cause to reinforce,

stronger ties with China.

The world's second largest economy for now.

The trip follows British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's visit to China last month,

part of a wider European effort to deepen trade links with Beijing.

Berlin still tries to hedge its bets though.

It considers China a key trade partner, but resists over-dependence.

The new coalition government in Germany is expected to keep the guarded approach

used by its predecessor.

German car makers have their own reasons to keep talking though.

BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have seen their China sales decline.

China drove profits for years until state subsidized EV manufacturing

sparked an intense price war and local brands gained the initiative and innovation.

Legacy Western car makers have fallen behind in competitive EV motors,

software and autonomous driving.

Money points one way when the politics points another.

German companies invested in the most capital they had done into China in four years in 2025.

That suggests corporate Germany plans to deepen its China commitment as politicians urge restraint.

Next up, an interesting story about Geely, China's third largest car manufacturer.

And they may build vehicles in the United Kingdom to avoid heavy tariffs on imports from China.

The company wants UK sales of 100,000 vehicles a year by 2030

and plans at least seven new models in the next two years.

Geely's UK head of sales framed local building as a test of scale.

It makes sense for us, said Harry Baithe.

If the brand grows to a point where it makes financial sense, we will do it.

Mike Yang, Geely's UK managing director, pushed the case beyond a simple unit cost.

He said customer experience and satisfaction matter more than just cheap manufacturing.

Reuters reported that Ford and Geely are talking about using Ford's spare capacity in their European factory,

with technology sharing perhaps on the table as well.

Ford's plant in Cologne, overhauled recently for $2 billion, builds the new Capri,

an explorer but they've not been big sellers.

It can make 250,000 vehicles a year but is running well under that.

Ford has placed its incoming Fiesta replacement, instead with Renault.

And their complex in France, a reminder that spare capacity can be traded just like any other asset really.

Geely does not have the field to itself.

Cherry, the parent company of J.Coup and Amoda doing good business in the UK,

confirming their plans for a European headquarters in Liverpool.

And reportedly is in talks to build cars at JLR, Jaguar Land Rover facilities in the UK.

Now, Great Wall Motors chair has been chiding China on quality and price wars.

The Great Wall Motor Chairman, Wei Jianjun, told staff at the company's early February annual meeting,

the Chinese car makers, including themselves, still sit a very large gap behind the best in the world.

That says a lot about their ambitions, if nothing else.

Mr. Wei pointed to Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United States as all holding

the edge in manufacturing experience and technical depth.

He told Chinese firms to keep learning from other regions to use internal evaluation

and find weak spots.

He held up Toyota as a model for quality.

Mr. Wei said Toyota keeps customer trust despite frequent recalls because it faces faults head-on

and explains things like recalls clearly.

Mr. Wei then turned to the home market.

He won China's price war, posed a slow burn risk.

Interesting.

Deep cuts that lack sustainable options, operations rather.

And solid product quality could corrode the industry's foundations.

He also cautioned that leaning on low prices as the main weapon for exports, cap the long-run growth.

This warning lands as GWM Great Wall Motor posts both scale and momentum.

The company reported revenue last year of US$30.7 billion equivalent and a net profit of US$1.37 billion.

It sold 1.32 million vehicles globally, including 403,700 new energy vehicles,

about a third of their business.

GWM Great Wall Motor have been urged and the wider industry being urged to focus on product quality,

technology development and long-term competitiveness as Chinese car makers ramp up production and export through 2026.

Let's talk a little bit about MG, one of the shining lights of China's export industry.

The SAIC owned company does exceptionally well in Great Britain and in mainland Europe as well.

MG, formerly a British brand and you know I would say with a dealership on every corner,

but certainly with a very high visibility, with a logo they haven't changed since it was British owned

and in the minds of many British is still a British brand.

MG's been teasing a new battery electric sedan, saloon as we would say, to replace the fastback-styled MG7.

The teaser landed on the 29th of January last month.

MG called it an expansion of its new energy vehicle lineup, but then stopped sharing any more details.

No technical announcements were made and then earlier today on the 20th of February

An unidentified prototype was seen, pictured, in an underground car park in China.

The Weibo account called Sugar Design, with those that posted the photos.

Well, this car that's in the photos matched the teaser from two, three weeks ago.

Wide sculpted rear wings, a very heavily sloped bonnet line.

Think Kia EV6, very thin headlamps and a fastback shape.

The front end adds some details worth watching.

There's a rectangular air intake below a thin slot.

In China that queue links to plug-in hybrids and range extenders that need more air being

sucked in than pure bevs that just need a bit of air for cooling.

That raises the prospect of a plug-in hybrid variant or an E-rev variant alongside a BEV.

Earlier reports out of China said this would be EV only.

Other visible details include five spoke wheels, semi-hidden door handles, and a very obvious

roof-mounted lidar at the top of the car in the middle, usual place for lidar,

and a very large tailgate as well.

The rear appears to carry an active spoiler.

It has the obligatory single full-width light bar.

Inside, seating for five, the spy pictures have a light-colored cream interior.

That looks really nice inside the vehicle as well.

And so the front seats look very sporty with integrated headrests and shoulder bolsters.

No powertrain specs of course because this is just spy pictures that I can share.

The platform we think would be very similar to SAIC's Z7 or the Shang-G Z7, the sedan

coupé that was jointly developed alongside SAIC and Huawei.

The Beijing auto show in late April 2026.

I think we'll see more details.

All the timing works out for an official reveal of this.

So there is an MG7 now in petrol form and it's 4.8 meters long, 1.9 meters wide,

1.44 meters tall, so it's low.

It's a low sedan saloon car and it sells in China from 17,000 US dollars equivalent,

albeit with a petrol engine.

The successor may well drop its petrol transmission and engine or it may keep a charging port

and a fuel cap.

The story gets more complicated, but otherwise a very good-looking

low-slang saloon sedan, not the biggest selling segment at the moment,

but certainly a segment that many people would want to move into, not only in China,

but outside of China as well.

The camouflage covering up any other significant details that I can bring in.

Standard door mirrors, not cameras, that kind of thing.

So everything pointing towards this being an affordable MG,

either as electric or as a pure Bev powertrain, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Right, another day, another Neo record in battery swapping and Zika starting in Italy.

Stick around, back in a moment.

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All right, welcome back to EV News, China.

Another day of the spring holiday and another record from Neo,

a new battery-swapping record.

In case you're thinking, hang on, he did this story yesterday.

He's getting a bit forgetful in his old age.

Yeah, so yesterday was 158,000 battery swaps in a day.

The most ever, a new record for Neo.

Well, just one day later, 166,000 battery swaps.

A new single-day record.

This surge coming in China's spring festival travel peak.

Neo logged three single-day swap records within five days.

And the traffic funneled through expressway sites.

As I mentioned yesterday, the busiest single station this time

was at the Xiaoxi service area.

That's on the Ningbo and Dongguang expressway,

the G1523.

That did 173 swaps in the entire day.

And that still sits below its theoretical peak throughput.

But it still gets pretty close.

Neo's got 3,750 swap stations in China.

And over 1,000 on the expressways, 550 in cities.

The network now doubles as a public scoreboard

for how well they're executing.

The CEO, William Lee, telling staff,

Neo targets full-year profitability in 2026

after its first quarterly profit in Q4 2025.

Now, Zika will start Italian deliveries this spring.

The Chinese EV brand owned by Geely expanding into Italy

as part of its Euro push.

Delivery start in the spring.

A four-model lineup.

Working with a partner called Jamil Motors.

Pricing starts at 38,000 euros.

That's 39,900 US dollars.

The acting CEO of Zika Europe calling Italy a key market

and pointing to a rising demand for premium EVs.

Building on success already in Sweden,

Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Zika also entered Germany in December 2024.

Italy now joins up the map.

The hard part starts once the cars arrive

and they have to sell them.

But they're learning more about how to sell to Europeans.

And finally, Gangfang Lithium,

a battery supplier to Chang'an and Hyundai,

has entered mass production of what they call

hybrid solid liquid battery.

I'm not surprised that at a nationwide level,

Beijing is cracking down on exactly what we call

solid state batteries.

And this summer we'll get some more regulations in place

in terms of exact definitions.

But for now, they call it a hybrid solid liquid battery.

So let's look at the specs

because that's what matters more than it's called.

An energy density of up to 650 watt-hours per kilogram.

That's exceptional.

Today's best lithium-ion batteries, the best,

are in the window of 250 to 300.

This doubles what's on the road right now.

The company was only founded in China in the year 2000

and in a short amount of time,

they went from a lithium salt and battery manufacturer

to supplying batteries for EVs in 2017.

Oh, I started working with Chang'an in 2023,

then in 2024, did a deal with Hyundai.

For now, the hybrid solid liquid technology

serves non-automotive applications.

The jump in energy density comes from what they say

is high performance, positive and negative electrode materials,

and a design that uses lithium metal anodes.

Lithium metal brings low electrochemical potential

and high theoretical capacity.

But dendrite growth has long blocked commercialization

of this technology.

They're sort of needle-like, I mean microscopic needle-like,

lithium structures, and as they grow,

they can grow to pierce the separator.

That would trigger a short circuit

and obviously degrade the cell.

Ganfeng says it suppresses dendrite growth

and improves electrochemical stability

by using a multi-element lithium alloy

rather than pure lithium metal.

The alloy architecture delivers a critical current density

and they say that those figures support 3C fast charging.

So not the fastest charging battery in the world,

but for many 3C is fine for automotive,

for stationary energy, absolutely fine.

But it's that energy density

of how much they've packed into that space,

that weight 650 watt hours per kilogram

that's deeply impressive.

What about safety?

Yeah, if you're wondering that,

it's a really big topic in China.

On safety, it pairs what it calls

zero-strain lithium alloy anodes

with a sulfur cathode that expands

during charging and discharging

by between three and five percent.

The cell has passed all of its

nail penetration tests

and heating up to 250 degrees Celsius

with no thermal runaway events.

This is what they call a platform,

a stepping stone, if you like,

towards the next generation of battery technology.

It already uses solid liquid approaches

to develop all solid state batteries

with lithium alloy anodes

and that's the sample production stage on that.

And that's your podcast for today.

Thanks for listening.

See you next week.

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In a week, you'll forget you set it up.

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CHINA: BMW CEO Urges China Engagement, Geely Eyes UK Production and GWM’s Chair Talks Quality | 20 Feb 2026

About this episode

BMW

Mercedes-Benz

Volkswagen

state subsidized EV manufacturing

price war

autonomous driving

Geely

Ford Capri

Ford Explorer

Ford Fiesta

Renault

Jaguar Land Rover

Great Wall Motor

Toyota

recalls

new energy vehicles

MG

SAIC

MG7

Kia EV6

range extenders

BEVs

plug-in hybrids

lidar

spy pictures

Huawei

BEV powertrain

battery swaps

energy density

lithium-ion batteries

EV batteries

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