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Geely and Mercedes-Benz invest $780 million to make electric Smart cars

BEIJING/SHANGHAI — Zhejiang Geely and Mercedes-Benz on Wednesday said they would each invest $388.77 million (2.7 billion yuan) in a China-based venture to build "premium and intelligent electrified" vehicles under the Smart brand. The 50:50 venture has received regulatory approval and will be based in the Chinese coastal city of Ningbo, the Chinese and German automakers said in a statement. Like Mercedes-Benz, smart is a Daimler marque. The venture will have manufacturing capacity in China and sales operations in China and Germany, the automakers said. Geely will lead in engineering the cars while Mercedes-Benz will take charge of their overall look, they said. The partners will each have three executives on the board of directors, with Geely's Tong Xiangbei becoming the venture's global chief executive. Geely has expanded rapidly through mergers and acquisitions since buying Sweden's Volvo in 2010 from U.S. parent Ford. In 2018, it built a stake of almost 9.7% in Daimler and set up a ride-hailing venture in China with the Stuttgart-based carmaker. Its latest announcement comes just over a month after China's Great Wall and Germany's BMW formed a venture to build electric Mini-branded cars in China, the world's biggest market for electrified vehicles where demand for smaller EVs is on the rise. Related Video:

2015 Malaysian F1 GP springs hot, humid surprises [spoilers]

In the two weeks since Australia both Mercedes and Ferrari spoke of the improved performance from their respective cars. In Malaysia, Ferrari showed it. Lewis Hamilton still put his Mercedes-AMG Petronas on pole position, but Sebastian Vettel got within two whiskers of the Brit, lining up second just 0.074 behind. Afterward, Vettel said Ferrari could win the race if everything went well. But in qualifying we didn't know how much of Ferrari's performance was truly down to the car and how much was down to the wet weather that struck near the beginning of Q2. The rain didn't hamper Nico Rosberg's run – the German said "I just didn't drive good enough" – and he took third spot in the second Mercedes-AMG Petronas. Showing what the Infiniti Red Bull Racing chassis can do when the power unit is working properly, teammates Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat grabbed fourth and fifth. Whippersnapper Max Verstappen, in his second race, qualified in sixth with an excellent drive through the rain; just 0.030 behind Kvyat, he said he could have got fifth if he hadn't had a running problem with his brakes. Williams head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley said he wouldn't complain about Mercedes' advantage, but Felipe Massa has spent the whole season so far banging the alarm about Ferrari's pace. He says Williams has lost its straight-line advantage, part of the reason the first Grove car is back in seventh, while Valtteri Bottas is in eighth. Between them was Romain Grosjean in the Lotus, but he got dropped two positions for a pit-lane infraction in Q2, so he'll be tenth. Ahead of him is Marcus Ericsson in the Sauber, who would lead the charge to turn in another surprise for the Swiss team. But the real surprise came from the Scuderia Ferrari, who, on a bright, sunny day proved that they don't need to add water for race-winning pace. While Hamilton got made usual awesome start at the lights, Vettel channeled that other famous German Ferrari driver and immediately cut across the track to intimidate Rosberg, maintaining his second place position into the first turn. Arguably the race-winning move came three laps later at that same turn, when Ericsson plunged in too fast and swapped ends, beaching the rear of his Sauber in the gravel trap. The safety car came out when the recovery truck emerged to retrieve the Sauber, and nearly all of the front-runners took to the pits to swap out of the medium tires. Vettel, however, didn't.

Autoblog Minute: New car customer satisfaction down according to latest ACSI report

Customers have spoken and automobile satisfaction is down in 2015. Autoblog's Chris McGraw reports on this edition of Autoblog Minute. Show full video transcript text [00:00:00] Customers have spoken and automobile satisfaction is down in 2015. I'm Chris McGraw and this is your Autoblog Minute. The American Customer Satisfaction Index or ACSI released its updated numbers and according to the survey, new car buyer satisfaction is down for the third straight year. According to an ACSI press release, customer satisfaction with new automobiles has fallen 3.7 percent, to 79 on its 100-point scale. The ACSI report is based on over 4,100 customer surveys collected in the second quarter of 2015 Sitting at the top of the industry in customer satisfaction is Toyota's Lexus brand with a score of 84. Which was good enough to dethrone Mercedes-Benz, which fell 3% to a score of 83. Of the Big Three, Ford was the only domestic automaker to maintain overall customer satisfaction with its score of 81. General Motors slipped 3% to 79 and Fiat Chrysler had a 5% drop, registering a score of 75 out the possible 100. What's driving this trend of customer dissatisfaction? ASCI points to the rise in recalls and car prices. Where do you land on customer satisfaction spectrum? Sound off in the comments with your thoughts on the current state of car ownership and brand quality. For Autoblog, I'm Chris McGraw. Autoblog Minute is a short-form video news series reporting on all things automotive. Each segment offers a quick and clear picture of what's happening in the automotive industry from the perspective of Autoblog's expert editorial staff, auto executives, and industry professionals. Chrysler Fiat Ford GM Lexus Mercedes-Benz Car Buying Ownership Autoblog Minute Videos Original Video