China Evergrande Group to invest US$40 billion to build EV production site in Shenyang and Guangzhou

China’s largest real estate developer China Evergrande Group is planning to expand heavily into the electric vehicle market by constructing major EV plants in the northeast China city of Shenyang and the south China city of Guangzhou.  The company has agreed to invest RMB 280 billion (US$40 billion) to build the two EV production centres after signing an agreement with the governments of the two cities.

The company will invest RMB 120 billion in Shenyang and the fund will cover construction of an EV assembly plant, an EV battery factory and a separate plant that will produce electric motors and control systems. The group did not release further details on the EV production site in Shenyang.

Evergrande will invest RMB 160 billion in Guangzhou for the construction of the Guangzhou production complex that will comprise an EV plant with annual capacity of 1 million vehicles, a factory that can build up to 50 gigawatt-hours of EV batteries a year, and a plant with the capacity to supply electric motors and control systems to 1 million EVs annually.

Evergrande Group began diversifying into the domestic EV sector in 2018 and its founder and chairman, Xu Jiayin has plans to make his company the largest EV producer worldwide in three to five years.  The Group, headquartered in Shenzhen recorded net profit of RMB 72 billion in 2018.

The company has made a number of acquisitions in 2019 towards this end.  Some of the key acquisitions include National Electric Vehicle Sweden, Shanghai EV battery supplier CENAT New Energy Co., U.K. electric motor maker Protean Holdings Corp. and Dutch electric motor manufacturer e-Traction.