Real Estate Giant Evergrande Keeps High-profile Forays in EV Manufacturing

Financials, Automotive, Healthcare Author: Huicong Yi Sep 05, 2019 11:35 AM (GMT+8)

Plowing ahead toward being the world largest EV maker, Evergrande has established a complete supply chain step by step.

Image credit: Jan Vašek/Jeshoots

The EV arm of Evergrande Group announced that it has obtained "intellectual property of world-class 3.0 chassis architecture" from BENTELER and FEV Group, two outstanding vehicle parts suppliers in Germany.

This symbiosis is considered as a milestone for Evergrande to shape a complete EV supply chain. Thus far, through a series of global merges and acquisitions, it has built up the R&D capacity of powertrain, complete vehicle control system. Furthermore, it saves much time as the common development cycle of an EV takes 5 years.

However, overheated enthusiasm for EV market seems to start a cold blast according to China's July sales data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. 

The cautionary tale appears since the NEV subsidy policy in China is ending from July 2019. Safety issue, as well as the scarcity of supporting infrastructure, also obstructed the growing of EV market. 

It seems like Evergrande's determination has not been affected by the market fluctuation. For this year, it poured USD 2 billion in the first half, extra CNY 6 billion has planned to bankroll the surging cost of EV business in the rest half of 2019. 

Through investment activities, Evergrande is getting more prepared with most of the processes in the whole auto supply chain, from component suppliers to manufacturing factories and also dealers. It also keeps good corporative relationship with the State Grid Corporation of China, to build up the energy network.

According to Brand Finance, Evergrande is the top 20 Chinese company with the most valuable brand. In the court of AFC Champions League quarter-final on August 28, 2019, the brand name of its NEV car, "Heng Chi" was shown to hundreds of millions of TV viewers. To a certain extent, the EV sales performance rendered as policy-driven, it's still uncertain whether the strong brand promotion will be effective.