Chinese start-up Iconiq set to enter country’s electric car market from 2019
The company says its seven-seater SUV model will set itself apart by focusing more on passengers’ experience than the driver’s
Chinese electric vehicle start-up Iconiq Motors plans to start production in 2019 of a few thousand of its seven-seater Iconiq 7 car, becoming the latest maker to say it is joining global and domestic rivals in pursuit of the government’s goal to have five million new-energy vehicles on the roads by 2020.
Alan Wu Nan, president of Iconiq, said the company is aiming to build a global brand through its partnerships with Microsoft and Austrian contract car maker Magna Steyr, and was waiting for its factory to be ready.
“We have bought an existing factory in Tianjin and will use it as our production base after renovations,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “We have received a tremendous amount of orders, but the cars will be built based on our capacity.”
Sales of new-energy vehicles in China surged after 2014 as the government, mindful of the worsening pollution problem in many cities, offered subsidies to support the manufacturing and sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids.
But sales slowed this year due to a further 20 per cent reduction in the subsidies, while an announcement that the incentive would be phased out altogether by 2020 has also deterred buyers. Buyers of electric vehicles can now get up to 66,000 yuan (US$9,995) in subsidies, only half of what was offered three years ago.