Samsung chairman meets with BMW CEO for business collaboration

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with BMW CEO Oliver Zipse to discuss opportunities for collaboration in electric devices (devices used in automobiles and electronics devices).

According to Samsung Electronics on Sunday, Chairman Lee, Samsung SDI CEO Choi Yoon Ho and other executives of the Samsung group met with BMW CEO Oliver Zipse and other executives at the BMW Driving Center in Yeongjong Island, Incheon on Saturday morning. “We are very pleased to work with BMW. Let us continue to expand our cooperation,” said Lee. “We are very proud of our cooperative relationship with Korean automobile and high-tech companies. Samsung is one of our most important partners, and it is greatly significant working together on ‘i7,’ in which BMW’s state-of-the-art technologies are concentrated,” said CEO Zipse.

Samsung and BMW kicked off the partnership in 2009, working on electric car batteries, and expanded communal areas in materials and technology development in 2014. From the start, Lee had been directly involved in relations with BMW executives, building on trust and leading cooperation. Samsung SDI’s high-performance batteries have been used in BMW’s electric cars since i3 in 2013, i8 in 2015, and iX and i4 in 2021.

Samsung acquired Haman in 2016 and chose ‘semi-conductor oriented electric parts’ as a new growth engine in 2018. Chairman Lee remarked that he directly witnessed evolving changes in the automobile industry after his trip to Europe in June. Lee is actively involved in cooperative relations with diverse partnership companies, including Chairman Chung Eui-sun of Hyundai Motor Group.


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