China sees billions invested in new electric car factories

Photo credit: Tesla.

Between three big names in the tech world, China will soon see over US$12 billion invested in a trio of new electric car factories.

The largest will be Tesla’s China factory, said to be a US$9 billion bet on the Chinese market. That hasn’t been announced officially yet, but other big investments have. The latest comes yesterday from the Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, the man who’s bankrolling the US-based new automaker Faraday Future. His tech company, LeEco, just announced US$3 billion to be ploughed into a huge auto park, spanning nearly 3 square kilometers, that will include a facility that can produce 400,000 all-electric vehicles.

The plan comes nearly four months after the tech exec, whose fortune is pegged at US$6 billion, showed off the electric LeSee sedan concept.

Jia Yueting (left) with the LeSee sedan at the April event in Beijing. Photo credit: LeEco.

In the midst of that is Fisker Automotive, the failed American automaker being reincarnated by Chinese billionaire Lu Guanqiu under the new Karma name.

The marque is set to build a US$375 million facility in China that could make as many as 50,000 electric cars per year, according to a regulatory filing seen by Bloomberg.

The Karma Revero, revealed today, will hit North America next month. The company is now run by China’s Wanxiang Group after rescuing Fisker from bankruptcy. GIF by Tech in Asia.

Karma today revealed the Revero. Its a revamp of the troubled model that first debuted to poor reviews in 2011. It looks a lot like the first iteration on the outside.

Manufacturing shift

All the money being thrown at new-ish electric and semi-autonomous car brands looks set to land in eastern China, far from the smoky industrial cities that produced the nation’s 20-plus million output of mostly gas-guzzling cars and vans last year.

Zhejiang province, just south of Shanghai, is likely to benefit the most. Karma’s plant will be in Hangzhou, hometown of billionaire ecommerce mogul Jack Ma and his Alibaba company, while LeEco’s vast auto park will be in nearby Huzhou.

Tesla has not yet picked a location for its China plant. The latest rumor places it within eastern China, perhaps in Shanghai.