China’s Evergrande Group, best known in the EV community for having taken a large stake in Faraday Future, is now taking a majority stake in NEVS, SAAB’s all-electric successor.
Back in 2012, Chinese investor Kai Johan Jiang bought the assets of Swedish automaker SAAB and decided to turn the company into an all-electric automaker.
On top of their Swedish assets, NEVS has built a new car manufacturing plant in Tianjin, China, and now has started to build another one, in Shanghai, China.
Just over a year ago, they brought back the SAAB 9-3 car into production as NEVS’ first all-electric car.
Now they need help ramping up production and they are turning to China’s Evergrande Group who has already made large investments in electric startups.
They announced that the investor group bought a majority stake today:
“Today, it was announced that Evergrande Health will be the new owner, with 51% of the shares in NEVS AB to become a global leader in new energy smart travel ecology. Kai Johan Jiang, with his company, NE Holding, will have 49 % of the shares.”
In financial filings, Evergrande said it paid $930 million for the stake and it also provided a 3-year $1.1 billion loan to NEVS.
Stefan Tilk, CEO at NEVS, commented on the announcement:
“I am very pleased with this. It means that NEVS will get a financial strong main owner who also is very interested in developing our vision about green mobility transport solutions for the future.”
Since NEVS launched, its Chinese owners have announced several deals for the company to make massive fleets of electric cars for Chinese companies. NEVS signed a framework deal worth about 8.5 billion crowns ($1 billion) with China Volant Industry Co. (Volinco) for 20,000 electric cars last year and Panda New Energy, a new energy vehicle leasing company in China, ordered 150,000 9-3 Sedan electric vehicles in 2015.
They are trying to ramp up to a capacity of 200,000 vehicles per year in order to deliver on those orders.
As for Evergrande, it brings its total investment in electric vehicles close to $2 billion with potential for an additional $2 billion.
They have been having a lot of issues with Faraday Future, but they have apparently settled their dispute last month.
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