> After reassessing its participation in January 2020, Bombardier exited the A220 programme in February 2020, selling its share to Airbus for $591 million. Airbus thus owned 75% of the programme; the remaining 25% of shares were held by Investissement Québec. Under the acquisition terms Airbus acquired Bombardier's option to buy out Investissement Québec's share from 2023, with a revised option date of 2026
That's pretty much giving it (majority control) up for free, and the rest for very cheap.
> Embraer would be in trouble to compete with Airbus anyway.
To an extent, but the E2 and the C-Series aren't really in the same segment - one is a regional jet, the other is a short to medium haul one. The Embraer E2s have less capacity and range than the A220, being optimised for shorter and less dense routes, and they have absolutely zero competition in the market today.
It appears that Bombardier took some other financial aspects in consideration before they made that decision. I have no further knowledge, and that would be more than I'm willing to research for this discussion. Besides, this is tangential to the Embraer x Bombardier debate.
> but the E2 and the C-Series aren't really in the same segment
Indeed, but there's some overlap between the largest E2 and the smallest C-Series, while the E2 is much cheaper.
They didn't "partner up". They gave up their modern design (C-Series) to Airbus, then had a fire sale of the remaining assets like the CRJ series, all due to Boeing sabotage. Apart from Bombardier, Boeing are the other big losers from the whole debacle, because Airbus got a very good and modern design for "free" (assumes liabilities).