An electric car gets served at the BYD Co. EV charging station at the company's headquarters in the Pingshan district of Shenzhen. (Photo : Getty Images)
Chinese tech company LeEco is planning to build an electric car factory, worth $1.8 billion, to be located in Zhejiang Province, which can produce 400,000 cars per year, and will also become part of a bigger $3 billion auto-related theme park, according to a report by Fortune.com.
The report said that LeEco has also invested in Faraday Future, a Los Angeles-based electric car startup, which has started building a factory in Nevada. The two companies will work closely on electric car manufacturing, research and development, and supply chain.
LeEco's move is part of plan to build electric cars in China while using U.S. car design and technology.
Recently, Chinese auto parts company Wanxiang also announced plans to build a $375-million factory in Hangzhou, China that could produce about 50,000 electric cars per year. The factory will be used by Wanxiang, which owns California-based Karma Automotive, formerly Fisker Automotive, to make Karma cars.
Another Chinese company called Xindayang is making electric cars, using battery tech from Boston Power. It has sold about 32,000 electric cars last year. Among the other companies with U.S. headquarters and Chinese investors include Atieva and NextEV.
However, some companies are mainly focused in selling their low cost vehicles in the country such as BYD, which has sold 61,722 electric cars last year, all of them in China.
Chinese electric car companies and non-traditional auto manufacturers are getting the support of the government, while global tech companies, such as Google and Apple are interested in developing smart and autonomous cars.
LeEco, which has earned $2 billion in sales from smart TVs, but the company has also shifted interest into driveless cars, cloud computing, smartphones, online music, sports streaming and programming.
LeEco sells millions of smart TVs in China every year. Last year it earned $86 million on $2 billion in sales. Now the company wants to get into new markets and has moved into driverless cars, smartphones, cloud computing, online music, sports streaming, and original programming.
Electric car companies have been encouraged by the success of Tesla, a car company owned by billionaire Elon Musk. The company is building a battery factory in Reno, Nevada and aims to produce about 500,000 electric cars by 2018.
Currently, Tesla is facing challenges in China due to the lack of charging infrastructure as well as strict regulations on foreign firms in the country. But earlier this year, the company signed an agreement with the Jinqiao Group, a firm owned by the Shanghai government, to make cars in China.
