Zeekr raises 750 million dollars in funding
Geely’s premium electric car brand Zeekr has raised 750 Million dollars from external investors. The cash from five strategic investors puts the carmaker at a value of 13 billion dollars.
Just as during the pre-A financing, one of the investors is the Chinese battery cell manufacturer CATL. According to Zeekr, it will use the funds to finance global development and its expansion to the European market this year.
Zeekr is the first electric car manufacturer to use CATL’s latest cell-to-pack Qilin battery technology, unveiled in June 2022. The 009 will use Qilin batteries from the start, and the 001 with the new 2023 model year, although initially only in a special model limited to 1,000 units.
The Zeekr 009, as well as the 2023 versions of the Zeekr 001, will feature the Qilin battery in the 140 kWh variant. With the third generation of CtP technology, CATL claims to have set a record for volume-based usage efficiency at over 72 per cent. With the first generation of cell-to-pack technology (CtP), this was still at 50 per cent. With an energy density of 200 Wh/kg, Zeekr is still not fully exploiting the Qilin battery technology. When the new technology was announced last summer, CATL stated performance of up to 255 Wh/kg with NMC cells and up to 160 Wh/kg with LFP cells.
“The Series-A fundraising is a vote of confidence in the growth prospects and strong future of Zeekr, which becomes the latest brand in the Geely Holding portfolio to secure a strong valuation,” said Daniel Donghui Li, CEO of Geely Holding Group, adding: “Geely Holding will continue to explore ways to unlock value across our portfolio as we pioneer new services and mobility solutions to meet customer demand across the world.”
Zeekr was founded in the spring of 2021 and is jointly owned by Geely Automobile and Zhejiang Geely Holding. The carmaker plans to launch a new model each year until at least 2026. In October, the brand began deliveries of its flagship, the Zeekr 001, in China. According to the brand, 80,00 units have already been handed over to customers there. Production of the Zeekr 009 is already underway in the eastern Chinese region of Ningbo.
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