Evergrande's Owner Vows to Produce Its First EV by June

Despite enormous difficulty to service its debt and deliver pre-sold apartments to homebuyers, the company hasn't cut the budget for its EV making business, banking on it to revive its fortunes

Hui Ka Yan, the founder and chairman of China's most indebted property developer, Evergrande, has appealed to the company’s NEV unit to go all out over the next three months to ensure the mass production of Hengchi 5, its first SUV, by June 22. 

Hui, once China’s richest man, made the pleas at a meeting held on March 22 to respond to queries by global creditors. 

The billionaire, who had  not been seen in public  for a long time, spoke at the meeting and motivated employees to work hard to meet preset business targets.

The company's first mass-produced EV, Hengchi 5, will be a small, fully electric SUV priced below CNY 200,000 (USD 31,250). It's expected to benchmark products like Audi Q1 and BMW X1. Besides, the model is the cheapest vehicle among nine cars it announced last year.

Evergrande once delayed the debut of Hengchi 5. According to the original plan, it should have been on the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's list of recommendation for EV in December last year, but the car finally was cataloged only this month. 

Evergrande has been preparing for a foray into China's red-hot EV space. Since 2022, the group has recruited sales and management personnel in 15 tier-one and tier-two cities across China.

The property company, which incurred a debt of CNY 1.95 trillion and promised to unveil a debt restructuring plan by the end of July, also has established  Hengchi New Energy Vehicle Sales Co., Ltd, This new unit, fully controlled by Evergrande, will cover the sales and operation of EV charging infrastructure and online ride-hailing services. 

Industry practitioners believe that the launch of Hengchi 5 will be strategically vital to the embattled group, which counts on a new growth driver to turn things around.