August 15, 2017,ZXZC - Chinese state-owned carmaker Beijing Automotive Group's (BAIC Group) electric vehicle unit, BJEV, said yesterday it managed to raise RMB 11.12 billion ($ 1.67 billion) in its series B round, which exceeded the earlier estimate of RMB 8 billion ($ 1.2 billion).

It is reported that this is the largest single financing in China's new energy vehicle industry, and also the largest one for a state-owned enterprise.

After this round, BJEV will have 33 shareholders, which includes state-owned enterprises China Cinda Asset Management Co., Ltd. and Zhongji Investment, a firm co-founded by the Hebei provincial government. Its parent BAIC Group and the group’s other affiliates have a combined 41.19% stake.

BJEV’s general manager, Zheng Gang, said the money raised will be used in the following areas, development and experiments on new models, improvement on the production scale and equipment technology, cooperation on industry chain, new material and intelligent network connection and the overall strategic cooperation with Daimler.

In June, BAIC formed a strategic partnership with Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz. As an important part of the partnership, Daimler agreed to invest BEJV to strengthen the companies’ cooperation in new energy vehicle field. According to Zheng Gang, related programs are ongoing and more details will be released by Daimler.

According to the released data, BJEV sold 36,084 vehicles in the first seven months, which had a 23% share in China’s battery electric passenger vehicle market. BJEV believes that it can achieve a growth of over 50%.

In the rest of this year, BJEV will launch 4 new models, including updated EC200 and EV300, a new minicar and a compact SUV. The compact SUV, which is likely to be named ET400, will have a range of 400 km and is claimed to be an important model within the price range between RMB 150,000 and RMB 180,000.