China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group, better known simply as Evergrande, will open pre-orders for the all-electric Hengchi 5 this week. Evergrande is a Chinese real estate developer who wants to move his core business into the automotive industry.
In early 2019, the company’s chairman Hui Ka Yang stated that the brand intends to become the largest and strongest electric vehicle manufacturing group in the world within 3-5 years. Obviously, things are going a little slower than Evergrande once hoped.
“The company’s electric vehicle division, Hengchi, planned to start mass production of the Model 5 in June 2022. Reuters reports that the assembly of the novelty was postponed to the third quarter.”
Evergrande aims to produce 1 million electric vehicles per year by 2025 and is currently working on a debt restructuring plan due to difficulties in attracting external investment for the Hengchi brand.
The world first saw the Hengchi 5 back at the Shanghai Auto Show in 2021, when the company unveiled at least nine planned models. Model number 5 has a length of 4.73 meters and is equipped with a lithium-phosphate battery manufactured by CATL. The power is provided by a 201 hp electric motor. This is enough to run up to 700 km in the NEDC test cycle.
Chinese media reported that Hengchi began accepting “blind orders” for this novelty back in May. These bookings require potential customers to make a deposit without knowing what the final price will be. It is claimed that during the first 10 hours, local motorists made at least 50,000 bookings.
