Evergrande to introduce first EV in 2020
The Chinese Evergrande Group has invested a further 3 billion US dollars into its Swedish subsidiary NEVS as well as concluding strategic cooperation agreements with no less than 60 suppliers for its electric car plans.
Evergrande’s China subsidiary Hengchi will introduce its first model in the first half of 2020. And to the suppliers: Evergrande is further expanding its strategy of strategic partnerships. In addition to the partners FEV Group, EDAG, IAV Group, AVL and Magna announced in September, Bosch, Magna, ThyssenKrupp, Continental, ZF and BASF have now been invited to join forces with the Chinese real estate giant on their ambitious electric mobility plans. This week, Evergrande hosted a summit in Guangzhou which representatives of over 200 automotive companies from all over the world attended. The agreements were also signed on the fringes of the summit. Participants included Stefan Pischinger, CEO of FEV Europe GmbH, Cosimo De Carlo, CEO of EDAG Engineering Group AG. In total, more than 1,100 CEOs and executives took part in the summit, said Evergrande.
The first Hengchi 1 model is to be launched in the first half of 2020 and the entire product range under the Hengchi brand will go into series production in 2021. Hui Ka Yan, CEO of Evergrande Group, spoke at the summit about 15 models covering all classes and vehicle types.
Evergrande says it plans to invest a total of 45 billion yuan (approximately $6.42 billion) in its New Energy Vehicles (NEV) sector over the next three years. Overall, production sites are to be set up, including in China and Sweden.
In Sweden, the Chinese company has held 51 per cent of the Saab successor National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) since the beginning of the year. Now Evergrande is investing a further three billion dollars in NEVS, increasing its stake to 82.4 per cent.
Over the past 12 months, Evergrande has invested several billion dollars in its electric car project, partly in acquisitions and shareholdings, partly in building its own plants. In order to become competitive quickly, Evergrande has concluded a number of contracts with European companies. After buying into NEVS, the Swedish-Chinese company, in turn, acquired 20 per cent of the shares of the Swedish sports car manufacturer Koenigsegg shortly afterwards. In July Evergrande founded a joint venture with the German company Hofer for the development and production of electric drives. At the beginning of September, the company also acquired the intellectual property rights to the Chassis Architecture 3.0 for electric cars from the supplier Benteler and the FEV Group.
As far as production is concerned, Evergrande is investing the equivalent of around 23 billion dollars in the construction of three plants for electric vehicles and their components in Guangzhou. It plans to build one production facility for no less than one million electric cars per year and two additional plants for the production of batteries with a total capacity of 50 GWh per year as well as electric motors and electronic control systems.
In view of the weakening NEV demand due to a reduction of subsidies in China, such sums also seem to make investors uneasy: According to a Chinese news site yicai global, the Evergrande’s share price fell by around 2.6 per cent after the NEVS deal was announced.
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