Nevs secures 250,000-unit contract

The consortium that bought Saab has announced its first major deal – an £8bn order to supply electric cars to a Chinese leasing company.

National Electric Vehicle Sweden (Nevs) focused on electric cars when it bought Saab in 2012, and that has been rewarded with a single order from Panda New Energy for 250,000 electric vehicles, including 150,000 cars based on the Saab 9-3 sedan.

The size of the contract is almost unprecedented, with just 83,000 electric cars in China at the end of 2014 and 665,000 worldwide.

Nevs has said it will hire hundreds of new workers to meet the order from Panda New Energy, a Chinese firm which leases zero-emission vehicles to chauffeur-driven fleets.

Nevs Vice Chairman Stefan Tilk said, ‘This is a strategic collaboration for Nevs, not only in terms of the numbers of vehicles, but it is also an important step to implement our vision and new business plan.

‘Cooperating with many chauffeured car service platforms in China, Panda aims to become one of the biggest electric vehicle leasing companies in the world.’

Nevs is co-owned by a holding company called National Modern Energy Holdings, as well as the Beijing State Research Information Technology Co. (SRIT) and Chinese industrial park Tianjin Binhai Hi-tech industrial Development Area (THT).