Aston Martin to invest over 650m GBP in China

Aston Martin has announced over 650 million pounds in investments to further grow in the Chinese market. In conventional ways rather than all-electric although the outreach to partners in the NEV segment is ongoing.

Aston Martin is next in line wanting to make it big in China. After Nissan just announced a 9 billion dollar investment, the British say they earmarked a more modest 652 million pound trade investment for China.

Aston Martin too wants (or has) to offer what Aston Martin President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr Andy Palmer calls “new and special vehicles.” Not all will be electric though, especially as Aston Martin’s offer is most limited in this regard. So the company has put out a call looking for partners in China that develop new energy vehicle technology.

Palmer said talks are underway with startups and established carmakers to share Aston Martin’s lightweight materials and aerodynamic technologies to improve the performancce of EVs.

For Aston Martin, such questions are a thing of the future. Only from 2025 every Aston Martin will come with the option to go mild-hybrid but Palmer promised to expand the electric offering so that by 2030, a quarter of the new models will be all-electric (we reported).

First up is the Rapide E in 2019 in a very limited production run of 155 pieces, followed by an electric variant of the DBX SUV (we reported).

For the Rapide E, Chinese CATL has been discussed to deliver the batteries. The company is on a high in Europe with customers such as BMW and lately Volkswagen and Daimler trotting to the through supposedly full of Lithium. CATL plans to produce 50 GWh annually from 2020 (we reported) and has released plans for a Gigafactory in China today.

astonmartin.com (trade investment), autonews.com (NEV cooperation)