Denza! That name doesn’t sound particularly good, nor much imaginative to occidental ears, but this hardly matters since this new brand won’t sell its products anywhere but in China. The men behind the new brand have other plans for the rest of the world, and they have other assets too, considering the 2 companies behind the Denza brand name are no less than the Daimler group, owner of the Mercedes brand, the oldest car manufacturer in the world, and BYD, a relatively new company, but a leader in battery technology. The Chinese and the German companies launched a joint-venture, BYD Daimler New Technology Co. Ltd. (BDNT), to build cars together 2 years ago. The first model will be unveiled at the Beijing motor show in April, but BDNT chose to unveil the brand name on a separate event. Smart move, so the people visiting the Beijing show know they will have to look for the Denza stand to see the new car.

That new car won’t be totally new. It will be built on the same platform as the old generation Mercedes B-class, though it should look radically different. The great advantage of that platform is a sandwich floor, which was intended to accommodate batteries, but Mercedes never launched the electric model it once thought about. So China will get it, after some investment because the whole electric drivetrain of the Denza car will be BYD-designed. It should be different from the e6 minivan, but nothing’s revealed about it yet. Let’s wait for the Beijing show then…