Juneyao on July 20 registered a company with CNY 1 billion (USD 146.23 million) of capital for businesses including EV sales, auto parts research and development and EV charging infrastructure operations.
According to a person who are familiar with the thing, Juneyao Group, the parent of Chinese carrier Juneyao Airlines , plans to start making electric vehicles (EV), as it seeks to diversify from businesses that have been hit hard by COVID. The plans are still at a preliminary stage, they added, but it would allow Juneyao to tap into a booming market that has been supported by policies.
EVs (including pure-electric and plug-in hybrid models), accounted for 22% of sales of vehicles in the first seven months of 2022, according to Chinese industry data, ranking the first around the world. Most popular brands such as NIO, Xpeng and Li Auto compete fiercely against foreign giants such as Tesla in the world's largest EV market, but Juneyao would join a growing list of high-profile Chinese companies with little or no automotive experience that are rushing into the sector. Besides Junyao, property group Evergrande, smartphone maker Xiaomi and search engine giant Baidu have started making EVs in line with a government plan to lead the world's auto industry in electrification and automation.
According to Qichacha, an information provider that uses official company registration sources, Juneyao, on July 20, registered a company with CNY 1 billion (USD 146.23 million) of capital for businesses including EV sales, auto parts research and development and EV charging infrastructure operations. The company is controlled by Wang Han, the son of the late Juneyao co-founder, Wang Junyao, who is also a majority shareholder of Yudo Auto, a Fujian-based EV maker.
The move into EVs is a fresh undertaking for Juneyao, the Chinese conglomerate that began selling flavored milk and yogurt to children in the early 1990s and later broadened to operate one of the country's largest private airlines flying domestic and international routes. China's domestic travel market is nursing heavy losses this year as authorities struggle to stop the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant under a strategy of eliminating cases. Juneyao Air warned last month of a net loss of 1.6 to 1.9 billion CNY for the first half when its main hub Shanghai suffered from a stringent citywide COVID lockdown for two months, and the number of flights fell to the lowest in the company's history.