Chinese motorized startup aim for electric self-driving car

MNA Technology Desk: A Chinese motorized startup is raising money with the stated aim for launching its first electric self-driving car by 2020, company executives told news on Tuesday, and the first round of funding is expected to be completed by September.

Future Mobility Corp. is one of several Chinese startups in the electric vehicles industry, and is backed by heavyweight financiers, with internet giant Tencent Holdings, electronics manufacturer Foxconn and car dealership group China Harmony New Energy Auto Holding.

In March this year, it plundered its leadership team from BMW’s electric vehicle line, and in May, at least two executives from Tesla Motors came on board as well.

CEO Carsten Breitfeld, who was project manager for the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car before moving to Future Mobility, told that the company will not focus on only one model at a time or have limited production of its models.

“Right from the beginning we define the platform, right from the beginning we define the production process to be mass production and right from the beginning we think of more than one model, a family of models, defined from this platform,” Breitfeld said, defining mass production as 250,000 to 400,000 cars annually.

The company was in the midst of closing its Series-A round of funding, which also included dealership chain China Harmony New Energy Auto, Breitfeld also added.

He decayed to give economic terms of the first round or name other possible investors that the company was in talks with, although he said the leadership team would also have partial ownership.

The first passenger vehicle from the upstart automaker would cost about 300,000 yuan (about $45,000) and the cars will be sold in China, Europe and the U.S., according to Chief Operating Officer and co-founder Daniel Kirchert.

The company is also going on a hiring spree, and will employ 600 people by the end of 2017, up from the current core group of about 50, he added.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Kirchert also said the company was currently “mainly talking to mainland-based investors as well as investors that are publicly traded in Hong Kong. But going forward we will consider investors from Europe and the U.S. given that we are running a pretty open platform.”

Future Mobility is not the first upstart automaker to make bold pronouncements. Chinese-invested Atieva aims to launch an electric car by 2018.

Its proposed smart electric cars will eventually be free, making money on in-car content and other services. Even Tesla now aims to produce 500,000 cars annually by 2018.

But Future Mobility stands out from its competitors for poaching its leadership away from big-name tech and autos companies.