Enlarge image
Big appearance:
One of nine models from the Evergrande car brand Hengchi at the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2021
Photo: Costfoto / ddp / ddp / Long Wei / Costfoto / Sipa USA
Christian von Koenigsegg
(49) jumped off in time.
The Swedish designer of super sports cars bought its majority stake in the joint venture Meneko from partner NEVS at the beginning of September, which had brought in 150 million in 2019.
Now Koenigsegg can build the 1700 PS hybrid Gemera himself, only without the planned components from the former Saab plant in Trollhättan, which belongs to NEVS.
NEVS has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong-listed Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group since July 2020, and this in turn is at risk of collateral damage in the crisis of the Chinese real estate giant Evergrande.
"Bloomberg" reports of failed salary payments.
Unpaid suppliers are withdrawing from Evergrande's auto factory projects in Shanghai and Guangzhou.
The company itself warns of a liquidity shortage.
Without fresh capital, the start of series production, which was originally planned for September and has now been postponed to the end of the year, shouldn't come off.
Company founder
Hui Ka Yan
(62) is pursuing great ambitions as always: in 2023 - now tacitly postponed to 2025 - one million electric cars are to be built, twice as many as most recently by market leader Tesla, and five million in 2035.
Objective: the "largest and most powerful new energy automotive group in the world", of course for the good of China and humanity.
Market value melted by 97 percent
For months there has been a growing speculation that Evergrande could sell the car subsidiary to rescue it from its lack of money.
As recently as April, Evergrande Auto was worth $ 87 billion on the Hong Kong stock exchange, more than established auto companies such as Ford and four times as much as its parent company Evergrande itself. Well-known investors such as Tencent, Sequoia Capital, Didi Chuxing and the private equity fund Yunfeng von Alibaba founder
Jack Ma
(57) took part.
Ma had Hui Ka Yan promote his car project at a private party in the summer of 2020.
In August, Evergrande announced that it was speaking to investors about selling shares in the auto business.
The smartphone group Xiaomi, which is expanding into the auto business, as well as Nio and Xpeng, both of which have already sold electric cars, were traded as interested parties.
But now the question is whether Evergrande can still add value in the auto business.
In the first half of 2021, the reported loss doubled to 4.8 billion yuan.
The share price is even more heavily lubricated than that of Evergrande as a whole, since the record high in April the minus has been 97 percent.
Auto factory as a pretext for cheap building land?
It looks like the big dream of electric car power is about to burst.
The centerpiece is the Hengchi brand, which presented 9 of the 14 planned new models at the Shanghai auto show this year - but all of them so-called mock-ups, i.e. dummies that are inoperable.
Two plants in China are more or less prepared for production, but reporters only found empty steel shells of the announced billions in investments at other locations. The "Wall Street Journal" suggests that the electric car plans were used as an excuse to get cheaper building land. The city of Nantong, for example, auctioned residential properties on the condition that the bidders invest billions in local electric car production. After that, only Evergrande was qualified and was able to get hold of huge spaces at a minimum price.
A dose of opportunism should definitely be involved.
The Evergrande subsidiary has only been operating under the name New Energy Vehicle since July 2020, previously it was called Evergrande Health.
As a hospital operator and provider of health services, the company continues to earn money to this day.
But electric cars seemed to be the better stock market story.
Hopeful Sono from Munich
Evergrande has been buying holdings from the industry since 2019, including big names outside of China: for example the aforementioned Sino-Swedish NEVS project, from which founder Kai Johan Jiang has since withdrawn and which has also lost the Saab trademark rights.
The old Saab factory in Trollhättan still has NEVS, albeit with a workforce that has recently been almost halved to 350 people.
After Koenigsegg left, the future hope remains a role as a contract manufacturer for the Munich start-up Sono Motors.
Its Sion small car inspires many in the electric car scene.
But whether it can actually go into series production from 2023 depends on the progress in Trollhättan.
Sono and NEVS insist again and again that the plan for the start of pre-series production in the coming year will remain unchanged.
Maybe it will work without Evergrande - NEVS boss Stefan Tilk spoke on Swedish radio last week about discussions with European and American interested parties.
New twist in the Faraday Future story
Even more is at stake with the US company Faraday Future, led by the former BMW i8 developer
Carsten Breitfeld
(58) and which went public in July.
Since then, market capitalization has fallen moderately, to as much as $ 3.3 billion.
A fifth of it belongs to Evergrande.
In the first half of 2022, production of the model FF91, which has been announced for seven years, is to start in California, on a smaller scale than originally planned with the new factory in Nevada.
As a Tesla hunter, Breitfeld's company can still see itself, albeit with a huge backlog.
That is probably the strongest selling point for Evergrande, although an exit from Faraday Future at the current price would be a losing business.
The irony of history: Evergrande joined Faraday Future, whose founder Jia Yueting left behind a mountain of private debt when he moved from China, in 2017 for two billion dollars as a savior in the financial crisis. Most of the money at Faraday has now been burned, and the founder and major shareholder have taken each other to court. Now Jia is out, the creditors are compensated with his share sale and at the same time the company is liquid again - but that's where Evergrande himself is bad.
Evergrande's car empire also includes drive manufacturers such as the British company Protean and E-Traction from the Netherlands, both of which develop electric wheel hub motors.
Evergrande holds the majority in a joint venture with the Swabian automotive supplier Hofer in the Adlershof technology park in Berlin.
Evergrande bought the rights to what it claims to be the "world-leading" design for an electric car chassis from the companies Benteler and FEV in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Evergrande retains a 20 percent stake in the Koenigsegg sports car manufacturer for the time being.
Their business is more fossil than electric and in a niche rather than in the mass market.
But Evergrande could use the investment value of 150 million euros now.
ak
