Letin, a Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) manufacturer also known as “Levdeo,” announced on Monday that it has secured 3.2 billion yuan ($447.2 million) in a Series A round of financing to expand the business in China and worldwide.
The lesser-known Chinese NEV company raised the Series A round from lead investor Weicheng West Investment & Development Group, an investment firm located in Letin’s headquarters in Weifang City in eastern China’s Shandong Province, it said in a statement.
Letin added that the investment also saw the participation of China’s municipal and provincial capital investors, as well as privately-run investment companies and industry corporates.
Letin plans to deploy the proceeds in new vehicle R&D, marketing, and manufacturing facilities, said the firm.
Established in 2008, Letin introduced its first self-developed electric vehicle (EV) in 2009 before its overseas foray the year after by selling vehicles to Japan, Indonesia, and some European countries, its official website shows.
With a focus on the development and manufacturing of NEVs and their key components, the company, in 2018, acquired Qinxing Auto, a domestic provider of hydrogen fuel-powered commercial vehicles. In 2019, it bought out Sichuan Yema Automobile, which has a history dating back to the 1980s and a product portfolio including some of China’s once popular light off-road vehicles and dual-purpose passenger-cargo cars.
The two acquisitions added three manufacturing facilities to Letin’s existing EV factory in Weifang. Through four production bases in China, the company develops and sells both electric and new energy passenger and commercial vehicles to customers in China and over 17 countries and regions across Europe, the Americas, and East Asia.
In Southeast Asia, it focuses on markets such as Indonesia and Cambodia. It introduced its latest EV “Mengo Pro” in Cambodia in October as the model’s debut outside of China.
The future of the Chinese industry for eco-friendly vehicles looks promising, as Chinese carmaker BYD overtook Elon Musk’s Tesla earlier this year as the world’s biggest EV producer by the number of vehicles sold. Data compiled by Bloomberg validates this projection, with China’s share of global passenger EV sales rising to 56% in the first half of 2022 from 48% in 2021.
Despite increasing industry competition from both traditional carmakers and emerging EV brands, new players in the sector continued to attract big-sized venture funding. But the presence of their largely publicly-listed, venture-backed predecessors including Nio, Li Auto, and Xpeng means that the space left for newcomers is shrinking.
More EV fundraisers these days were branched out from long-standing car companies. Voyah, a two-year-old EV brand affiliated with China’s auto giant Dongfeng Motor Group, just pocketed 5 billion yuan ($698.7 million) in its Series A round last week. GAC AION, the EV arm of the Chinese state-owned automaker Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC), garnered 18.3 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) in a Series A round to reach a valuation of over 103.2 billion yuan ($14.4 billion).
The market demand for EVs, especially smart EVs equipped with the Internet of Things (IoT) and other advanced technologies, is expected to explode. “It took about 13 years for BYD to sell our first one million NEVs before we reached the second one-million milestone in just one year. We estimate to cross the third one-million-sales threshold in less than 12 months,” said Xiao Meijuan, the branding and public relations director of BYD, at an industry event earlier this month.