Shanghai (ZXZC)- On June 11, Chinese real estate giant Evergrande Group and the state-run oil firm Sinopec Group entered into a strategic partnership for a number of businesses including the construction of EV charging and battery swapping facilities.

Evergrande Group, Sinopec Group signing agreement; photo credit: Evergrand Group

Under the agreement, both parties will leverage their advantages in energy, technologies, referral traffic, and sales network to jointly work on the building of the charging and battery swapping stations for lithium-battery-powered vehicles, automotive lightweight materials, new high-performance building & chemical materials, as well as mineral water.

The property giant Evergrande Group is being much discussed by insiders of Chinese automotive industry due to its EV development ambition. It announced in August 2019 the birth of the EV brand “Hengchi”, under which a total of nine models simply numbered from 1 to 9 have been unveiled.

Evergrande Auto, the group's EV-dedicated arm, said it plans to put its in-house developed power batteries into mass production in the second half of 2021. In addition, it signed on March 15 an agreement with TINNOVE, a Tencent-backed IoV (Internet of Vehicles) technology developer, to build a joint venture dedicated to the development of in-car smart OS (operating system) with independent intellectual property rights. The H-SMART OS, an intelligent-connected system Evergrande Auto co-developed with Tencent and Baidu, was also unveiled in that month.

Sinopec Group is the largest oil and petrochemical products supplier in China and also ranks second in the world by the total number of gas stations. The group is also speeding up the transition to being a comprehensive energy service supplier. During the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025), Sinopec plans to deploy 5,000 EV charging and battery swapping stations.