YOUXIA Motors Raised 5 Billion Yuan in Series B Financing
On March 31st, YOUXIA Motors announced its completion of Series B financing at a press conference, revealing the company’s financing information for the first time since its establishment in 2013. This round of funding brought in 5 billion yuan ($793M), co-invested by twelve institutions including China Environmental Protection Industry Corporation and China Fortune Ocean. YOUXIA Motors has raised a total of 6.22 billion yuan ($990M) including Series A financing, and has a valuation of 12.2 billion yuan ($1.9B).
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Established in October 2013, the low-profile YOUXIA Motors is one of the earliest new automobile companies in China. In July 26, 2015, the company released its first internet-connected automobile series YOUXIA X. In December, 2015, Wei Jun, the former president of Ceetop Inc., officially joined YOUXIA Motors, accelerating its development towards mass production.
The addition of Wei Jun brought force to the company’s capital structure, recruitment, supply chain development and government cooperation, directly contributing to its two rounds of funding. The team is also putting more effort into branding and product positioning, planning to make further progress on the appearance, function and intelligent performance of the product.
At present, YOUXIA Motors has set up its own factory and production line, and is focused on operating its own brand. The concept version of YOUXIA X was released in 2015, after three years of R&D and four rounds of trial production, the manufacturing version of this automobile has finally been prototyped.
With an amazing acceleration performance, YOUXIA X is equipped with a 270 kW peak motor, instantly producing 440Nm of torque. The car only takes 5.6 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h. More impressively, unlike traditional engines, the acceleration process is relatively quiet. Three different batteries are used in YOUXIA X – 40 kW, 60 kW and 85 kW. Its battery control system is based on the LTC 6804 chip and is 8 times more accurate than that of TESLA and BMW I3.
The first production base of YOUXIA Motors was established in April 2017 in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province. It has a “1+5+1” general layout, namely one main factory equipped with four major technique assembly lines, five core subsidiary enterprises as well as a research and trial production center. The project occupies a total area of 2600 acres, with a yearly planned capacity of 200,000.
In October, 2017, YOUXIA held its first global partnership conference with over 300 suppliers attending. Renowned motor companies including Bosch and Tommykaira signed agreements with YOUXIA Motors, others include companies that have worked exclusively with Tesla.
According to president Wei Jun, “We have always kept a low profile. Firstly, automobile manufacturing is a rather practical business in nature, and we seldom brag before finishing the work as the product is everything. Secondly, we need the team to focus on research and manufacturing. The company needs to rely on a more accurate and highly-efficient operating system as we have put four years of effort into mass production, from R&D, trial production, testing, regulation studies to supply chain development and independent production lines. New breakthroughs are still ahead of us and our ultimate goal is to go to market.”
According to Yin Kun, the CEO of China Fortune Ocean (one of its investors), YOUXIA Motors excels in industrial structure and branding in the new energy vehicle sector. “We believe the company has tremendous growth potential with its current valuation and capital structure. It is an excellent investment.”
