Battery Firm Sunwoda EVB Bags $380M From Investors Including Li Auto and SAIC Motor

On the evening of February 24, Chinese leading lithium-ion battery maker Sunwoda announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., Ltd. (Sunwoda EVB), received an investment worth 2.43 billion yuan ($380 million) from a total of 19 separate investors.

After the deal is completed, registered capital of Sunwoda EVB will increase from 5.087 billion yuan to 6.325 billion yuan. Sunwoda is still the controlling shareholder of its subsidiary, with a shareholding ratio of 57.5%. All the fresh capital raised in this round will be used for daily operating funds.

Among the investors, Jiangsu Chehejia Automobile, a Li Auto affiliate, and Weirui Investment, an affiliate of NIO Inc., increased their capital by 400 million yuan and 250 million yuan, respectively, thereby holding 3.21% and 2.01% of equity shares in Sunwoda EVB. In addition, Chinese media outlet 36Kr learned that XPeng Motors is actually behind Sky Top LLC, the second investor in this round of financing, which contributed 400 million yuan and obtained 3.21% of shares overall.

In addition to the three new carmaking firms, Sunwoda EVB’s investors include affiliated companies of traditional car giants, such as SAIC Motor and Dongfeng. This means that Sunwoda’s development in the field of power batteries has been recognized by various leading car companies, with which it may achieve future cooperation.

Sunwoda’s main business is lithium-ion batteries for smartphones, laptops and automobiles, while Sunwoda EVB is the core company operating its power battery business.

Sunwoda previously disclosed that it has obtained power battery orders for many new car models, such as the SAIC-GM-Wuling and Dongfeng Liuqi, and has also carried out business cooperation with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, Geely, Dongfeng Liuqi and other car companies.

In September last year, Sunwoda EVB completed its first round of financing worth 750 million yuan, as four new shareholders obtained shares, including companies under Wang Mingwang and Wang Wei, the actual controllers of Sunwoda.

SEE ALSO: China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance Releases Power Battery Data

The company is currently building new power battery production bases in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province and Zaozhuang, Shandong Province. Among them, the Nanchang program has a total investment of about 20 billion yuan and a planned battery capacity of 50 GWh, which will be invested in four phases. The Zaozhuang program also has an investment of about 20 billion yuan, and plans to build a power battery and energy storage battery factory with an annual production capacity of 30 GWh.

According to the China Automotive Battery Innovation Alliance, in 2021, the installed capacity of Sunwoda’s automotive battery operations exceeded 2 GWh, ranking tenth in China.