China’s Latest All-Electric Vehicle Company Raises $600M In Fundraising

Another day, another story of an eco-friendly Chinese startup booming up. A company called Singulato Motors has recently raised $600 million as a part of its fundraising phase, with a lot of support and help from the Chinese government and its policy towards reducing carbon emissions.

42-year-old Shen Haiyin, Singulato’s CEO, revealed that his company managed to rack up over $600 million, most of which was earned from the investment partnerships with the local government of Tongling City in China’s Anhui Province, where the company looks to set up an electric vehicle production plant. 

https://youtu.be/gJcXo29fqEI

Tongling mayor NI Duping said that they hope the company can make 200,000 cars per year by 2020, and this initiative can lead to a new era in automotive creation. He said,

“We believe this effort will definitely allow Tongling to accelerate the city’s industry transformation.”

Singulato hopes to start their manufacturing as soon as 2017 or early 2018, with a crossover SUV their first car.  Shen explained what kind of market they are targeting,

“We’re targeting our EVs at young city dwellers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other large cities where buying a gasoline car is becoming more difficult because of purchase restrictions imposed by the government.”

Although the Chinese government has been showing great interest in promoting the EV cars, these cars haven’t taken over the Chinese roads as they might have hoped for. 289,000 ‘new energy’ cars were sold in China between January and September, which falls well short of its 700,000 unit target.

Still, Shen and Singulato are highly optimistic, and hope to emulate the success of the tech-giant Tesla, Shen said:

“We think an even bigger differentiator will be how connected and intelligent the car is going to be, and we’re focusing on that more than the car itself.”