Little-known Chinese electric car start-up Singulato Motors has raised more than $600 million in a second fundraising - the latest such move illustrating China’s headlong ‘gold rush’ into all-electric battery cars.
Shen Haiyin, Beijing-based Singulato’s 42-year-old co-founder and CEO, says the company plans to invest in technology and build what he says will be a state-of-the-art electric vehicle production plant capable of making 200,000 cars a year, by around 2020.
The two-year-old start-up, with 140 employees, plans to roll out its first product, a crossover sport utility vehicle, by late next year or early 2018.
Production will be outsourced, at least initially, to an existing automaker with excess manufacturing capacity, Shen said.
“We’re targeting our EVs at young city dwellers,” he explained. Shen declined to elaborate on his pricing strategy beyond saying his cars would compete on price with Tesla’s $35,000 Model 3
For its first model, Singulato has developed in-house the electric propulsion and smart, connected systems, while doors, seats, panels and other basic parts were outsourced.
