China’s Evergrande Unveils Six New Energy Vehicles, Ushers in Leap-forward Development in NEVs
Chinese real estate giant Evergrande Health Industry Group Limited (Evergrande Health) announced on August 3 the prototypes of six new energy vehicle (NEV) models under its Hengchi brand in Shanghai and Guangzhou at the same time, marking a substantial development of the company in the NEV field.
The six prototypes, namely Hengchi 1, Hengchi 2, Hengchi 3, Hengchi 4, Hengchi 5, and Hengchi 6, cover A to D levels and sub-models such as sedan, SUV, and MPV. The company has not yet uncovered the specific performance, parameter configuration, and mass production time of these models, Caijing reported.
According to Evergrande, the six new models are designed by Anders Warming, Michael Robinson, Maruyama Gonggu, and many other top car designers, who belong to a global automotive modeling design alliance formed last year by Xu Jiayin, the chairman of the group.
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According to the previous plan made by Evergrande, Hengchi’s full range of products will achieve ramp-up production in 2021, and the company will give priority to trial production of some engineering prototypes this year.
Evergrande’s planned total production capacity of the first phase of car-making exceeds 1 million vehicles, 36Kr reported. Among them, the production bases in Nansha, Guangdong, and Songjiang in Shanghai will be completed in the second half of 2020 and will be put into production in 2021, with the first phase planned production capacity reaching 200,000 vehicles.
At present, Evergrande has multiple vehicle production bases in Guangdong, Shanghai, Tianjin, Liaoning, and other places, and all production bases are under construction, 36Kr reported.
According to Chinese media EEO, Evergrande’s three-year investment budget in the field of NEVs totals 45 billion yuan, of which 20 billion was invested in 2019, 15 billion will be invested in 2020, and 10 billion will be invested in 2021. These investments will be mainly used for the construction of production bases and vehicle model R&D, EEO reported.
Formally deemed as an amateur in the NEV industry, the Hong Kong-listed Evergrande stated in its announcement on July 27 that since the company is shifting its mainline business to the field of NEVs, the board of directors proposed to change its name to China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Limited, which can be referred to as Evergrande Auto.
As of press time, Evergrande Health (00708.HK) fell 5.668% to HK$34.95.
