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Ready to go: Sixt will cooperate with BYD from China in the future
Photo: Marc Müller/ dpa
The car rental company Sixt wants to buy more than 100,000 electric cars from the Chinese manufacturer BYD by 2028.
Both companies have signed a corresponding agreement, as Sixt announced on Tuesday.
The landlord has therefore initially ordered "several thousand" cars.
The first are to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2022.
As the first BYD model, Sixt will offer the fully electric Atto 3 as a rental car.
According to Sixt, the aim of the alliance is to give BYD access to the car rental market.
At the same time, the Germans can advance the electrification of their fleet.
Sixt announced that the companies also want to explore opportunities for cooperation in different regions of the world.
Starting in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK, Sixt will be the first car rental company in Europe to offer BYD vehicles, the company said.
Sixt had already announced that it intends to increasingly convert its fleet to electric drives.
By 2030, the rental company wants to have 70 to 90 percent of its vehicles in Europe electrified.
Other manufacturers should then also be represented in addition to BYD.
In addition, Sixt is building its own charging infrastructure.
Chinese manufacturers on their way to Europe
The American Sixt competitor Hertz announced in a similar major deal at the end of 2021 that it would buy 100,000 Tesla cars.
German manufacturers currently usually deliver their electric cars with long waiting times.
It is therefore becoming more difficult for Sixt to negotiate the price reductions expected for the rental business.
"With over a million vehicles produced in the period from January to August 2022, BYD is the world's largest vehicle manufacturer in the field of e-mobility," says
Vinzenz Pflanzen
, Chief Business Officer of Sixt and responsible for sales and vehicle purchasing.
The agreement with BYD is an important milestone in fulfilling our promise to put significantly more electric cars on the road.”
manager magazin had already reported extensively on the advance of Chinese car manufacturers on the European market.
According to the research institute Merics, which specializes in China, almost 20 brands have announced their launch in Europe in the past four years.
Quite a few have already arrived, including heavyweights like the state-owned company Saic, currently the seventh largest car manufacturer in the world, hyped start-ups like Nio, but also no-names like Aiways.
The Chinese are reluctant to make big announcements.
But aggressive numbers are circulating in the industry.
XPeng wants to sell 100,000 cars in Europe by 2023;
as much as 2021 worldwide.
BYD set the target for 2023 at 200,000.
The fact that Sixt is now a BYD partner is also not surprising: the company bosses
Alexander
and
Konstantin Sixt
(42, 39) had intensively checked the cars of various manufacturers from the People's Republic - now they have apparently made their decision.
cr
