Evergrande Auto, the car-making business of China’s largest real estate company, has invested RMB 47.4 billion ($7.25 billion) to build new energy vehicles, the company said in its annual financial report released March 25.
Evergrande Auto’s operating revenue in 2020 was RMB 15.49 billion, up 175 percent from a year earlier. Its gross profit was RMB 2.70 billion, up 43% year-on-year.
Evergrande Auto reported a loss of RMB 7.67 billion in 2020, compared with a loss of RMB 4.95 billion in the same period of the previous year.
Evergrande Group has planned auto production bases including those in Guangdong, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Liaoning, with a total capacity of over 1 million vehicles planned in the first phase.
Two of the production bases were completed in 2020 and will start production this year.
Nine of the 14 vehicles designed by the company have already been unveiled, but none have yet begun mass production.
The company aims to produce and sell more than 1 million vehicles by 2025 and more than 5 million by 2035.
In 2018, Evergrande Group was already the second-largest shareholder in China Grand Auto, a leading Chinese car dealership.
Evergrande originally chose to partner with Faraday Future to make cars but changed its plans due to the debt crisis of the latter’s founder Jia Yueting.
Evergrande Group took a stake in Swedish electric car maker NEVS in January 2019 and acquired the latter in June last year, changing its name to Evergrande Auto.
Previously Evergrande Auto said it had set up a joint venture with Tencent, in which Evergrande Auto holds a 60 percent stake, to jointly develop an in-car smart operating system.
