After an eight-year run and a reign as one of the highest funded EV startups in all of
China, WM Motor and its brand Weltmeister have filed for bankruptcy. Today’s news puts a bookend on a turbulent year facing financial struggles, but the startup has vowed to restructure through debt collectors and will seek a rebirth.
As we eagerly slam the book shut on 2021 and look toward a promising year of further EV adoption in 2022, it’s important to look back and assess how far the global market has come during this most recent trip around the Sun. From there, we can compare 2021’s numbers to the year prior and gain an idea of the trajectories many of the major EV automakers may travel on into 2022. We will begin with EV deliveries in China, a rich mecca of EV production and innovation with many companies now expanding to other markets around the globe.
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Chinese EV automaker WM Motor has officially shared full images and hardware details of its first electric sedan, the M7. Since announcing the new EV this past July, WM Motor shared that the M7 would include LiDAR. With today’s announcement, we now know that the sedan will include not one, not two, but three LiDAR sensors.
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EV startup WM Motor has teased a first image of its upcoming M7 sedan ahead of its official unveiling in China later this week. The M7 is based on a concept EV previously shared by WM Motor and will be the first sedan in its fleet. Furthermore, it’s reported to come equipped with three separate LiDAR sensors.
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Chinese EV startup WM Motor has unveiled its first sedan, called the M7 set to debut in China later this year. Furthermore, the automaker has shared plans to introduce a second sedan-like EV specifically for the mobility market called the E5. With the announcement, the company has also revealed a new logo.
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We tend to cover a lot of big news pertaining to electric vehicle market leaders (by value and recognition). That said, there are a lots of lesser-known electric vehicle companies that don’t get as much love. The plan is to change that. This is the first of several pieces focusing on electric vehicle companies you may not know yet. One is Weltmeister aka WM Motor, based in China. Below is a quick background on Weltmeister, so you can casually name drop them next time you’re discussing the global EV market.
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WM Motor, a Chinese EV startup reportedly backed by a $1 billion investment and led by a former Geely executive, unveiled its first electric SUV prototype this week and launched its new brand called ‘Weltmeister’.
The vehicle looks suspiciously a lot like the Mitsubishi Outlander, which isn’t exactly surprising since we caught them photoshopping the vehicle on top of Outlander press images last year.
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In a profile published back in August, Bloomberg revealed a new electric vehicle startup founded by the former Geely executive who oversaw the takeover of Volvo, Freeman Shen, and reported that they managed to raise over $1 billion in just over a year in order to launch mass-market electric vehicles by 2018.
The company called WM Motor unveiled its first 3 models this week through press content sent to Chinese media and now making its way to international media. It appears that one of the first concepts of this billion-dollar EV startup is simply photoshopped images based on promotional pictures of the 2016 Mitsubishi Outlander.
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