Geely’s Farizon Auto Breaks $300M in Pre-A Round Financing
Geely-owned new energy vehicle brand Farizon Auto on October 26 announced its completion of pre-A round financing totaling over $300 million, led by Hidden Hill Capital which is backed by Singapore’s Global Logistics Properties Ltd. Other key investors include Transfar, Citic Securities Investment, Industry Foundation of Xiangtan (Hunan, China), GLy Capital and Mirae Asset.
Farizon also announced its goal to achieve operational carbon neutrality in 2025 and full life-cycle carbon neutrality in 2030. Its Xinghan Academy of Engineering, established in August, will focus on the use of green methanol, methanol extended range and pure electricity in the field of heavy duty trucks.
Launched in 2016 as China’s first commercial vehicle brand to focus purely on new energy, Farizon has established a technical route of urban commercial vehicles with pure-electric drive and extended-range electric drive at the core. It also has another branch of commercial road vehicles with liquid hydrogen energy methanol power and pure-electric drive using battery swapping technology. Its products cover heavy duty trucks, light trucks, small and micro trucks, light commercial vehicles (LCVs), buses and so on.
Relying on the deep technical accumulation of Geely’s Research Institute, Farizon Auto has established the largest new energy commercial vehicle research institute in China, bringing together over 2,000 R&D engineers at home and abroad. In November of last year, it announced development goals for the next ten years, including that its sales volume of NEVs will reach 570,000 units in 2030 for a market share of 20%, and its carbon emission reduction rate of the whole vehicle life cycle will be 90%.
Farizon Auto is also accelerating its exploration of global markets. On March 28 this year, its methanol heavy duty truck started testing and demonstration operations at the Aalborg Port, Denmark. On June 17, light truck model E200 and small micro truck model E200S were sent to Costa Rica. Up to now, many products of Farizon Auto have been exported to Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica, Israel and other countries in the Middle East, and Geely’s Xingji pure electric bus has been put into trial operations in Thailand, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark and other countries.
SEE ALSO: Geely to Release Concept Truck Supporting Different New Energy Sources This Year
According to data released by the brand, from January to July this year, the overall sales volume of commercial vehicles in China decreased by 44.7% year-on-year. In contrast, the commercial NEV market kept rising rapidly, with sales volume increasing by 60.4% year-on-year and penetration rate reaching 7.6%.
