Doylestown Auto Repair

NEVS, the company that took over Saab, gets new majority owner

Audi Repair Shop Doylestown
Call 267 279 9477 to schedule a appointment


Chinese real estate conglomerate Evergrande Group, a key investor behind troubled

electric vehicle

startup

Faraday Future

, has acquired a 51 percent stake in

NEVS

. That’s the Chinese-backed Swedish

electric vehicle

company that purchased the assets of

Saab

out of bankruptcy in 2012.

The investment by subsidiary Evergrande Health Industry Group was valued at the equivalent of $930 million and is expected to help NEVS develop new

EVs

. Evergrande said it paid the first installment of $

430

million on Jan. 15, with the remainder due by the end of the month. The remaining 49 percent stake is controlled by a holding company controlled by NEVS founder Kai Johan Jiang.

“It means that NEVS will get a financial (sic) strong main owner who is very interested in developing our vision about green mobility transport solutions for the future,” NEVS CEO Stefan Tilk said in a statement.

NEVS, short for National Electric Vehicle Sweden, owns production facilities in Trollhättan, Sweden, and Tianjin, China, with another under construction in Shanghai. In late 2017 the company launched what apparently was

limited production of the 9-3 EV

, an electric vehicle based — you guessed it — on the old

Saab 9-3

platform. The company now says it will be built in Tianjin starting later this year, with components coming from Trollhättan. It boasts a 186-mile range, in-car WiFi and a cabin air filter for the notoriously smoggy Chinese air.

It also showed a

battery-electric 9-3X concept

at CES Asia in 2017, which is likely to be its next model pegged for production. The

South China Morning Post

, citing local media reports, says two of NEVS’ models

meet the standards for mass production

in China.

Definitely the best promotional video we’ve ever seen.

Evergrande Health first came to Faraday Future’s rescue back in 2017 with a promised $2 billion investment, but the two sides later went into arbitration in Hong Kong over a dispute about money following the first infusion of $800 million, leading the automaker to

cut staff and wages

last year, casting the future of

FF

into doubt. At the end of 2018, Faraday announced it had

entered into a new restructuring agreement

with an Evergrande Health subsidiary that sees them end litigation and jettison the previous investment agreement, taking Evergrande’s investment in the company to 32 percent.

Related Video:

from Autoblog http://bit.ly/2RuyFcW