China LeEco’s smart car unit raises $1b

Investors include Yingda Capital, a PE unit backed by State Grid, Shenzhen Capital Group, Lenovo Corporation, China Minsheng Trust, Macrolink Group and Hongzhao Capital, LeEco CEO Yueting Jia said at a company event, according to local media. It is believed to be the largest first round of funding in the automotive industry.

LeEco started out as an online video portal - LeTV - in 2004. The company went public on Shenzhen's Growth Enterprise Market in 2010. The following year it set up a movie production house - Le Vision Pictures - producing local movies as well as financing and distributing Hollywood imports into China. The company has been aggressively expanding into other businesses such as e-commerce, smart TVs, smart cars and content production.

As part of the effort to develop its in-house driverless smart car, the company launched its Super Electric Ecosystem initiative in 2014, hiring former executives from SAIC General Motors, SAIC Volkswagen, Infiniti and Baidu's auto unit.

Earlier this year, LeEco announced its investment into a joint venture between UK-based luxury sports cars maker Aston Martin and California-based electric car start-up Faraday Future, a direct competitor of Tesla, to co-develop its first electric car. In the meantime, LeEco unveiled a driverless electric car - LeSee - in Beijing, which was able to both self-drive and self-park using voice commands via a mobile app.

By 2022, LeEco plans to invest a total of $7.9 billion into the supercar business, financed through bank borrowing and equity financing. It expects to break even between 2019 and 2020, Jia said.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Venture
• Expansion
• TMT
• automobiles
• Shenzhen Capital Group
• China