ROX Motor, a Chinese intelligent vehicle developer backed by Tencent and Coatue Management, has recently secured a new investment of $1 billion from textile and aluminium manufacturing giant Weiqiao Pioneering Group.
The Shanghai-headquartered startup, founded in early 2021, secured the billion-dollar investment as its largest venture deal to date.
The deal came just over a month after the startup introduced its first vehicle model Polestones 01. As the maiden product under its intelligent new energy vehicle (NEV) brand Polestones Automobile, Polestones 01 is a hybrid six or seven-seater recreational SUV that ROX Motor has developed in partnership with Weiqiao Pioneering Group and Beijing Automobile Works (BAW), a Chinese manufacturer of light off-road vehicles and trucks.
It is priced at up to 359,900 yuan (about $49,200), supporting 1,115 km of combined fuel and electric range in addition to 235 km of pure electric cruising range.
Yan Feng, the CEO who co-founded ROX Motor with the company’s board chairman Chang Jing, said in a statement that Polestones Automobile is designed to offer an “exquisite car camping experience” to families that appreciate road trips across the nation.
This market positioning may help differentiate ROX Motor from some of the long-standing brands in the world’s biggest yet hyper-competitive NEV market. Domestic automobile giant BYD, Elon Musk’s Tesla, and state-owned automaker SAIC Motor are currently the top three NEV sellers in China, accounting for over half of the market share based on their combined sales volume in the first six months of 2023.
In total, Chinese consumers purchased over 3.7 million NEVs in H1 2023, up 44.1% from the same period last year and representing about 28.3% of the country’s overall auto sales, according to the China Association of Auto Manufacturers (CAAM), an industry association.
Riding on opportunities from China’s burgeoning NEV market, ROX Motor has previously attracted venture financing from Chinese technology giant Tencent and a range of investment firms such as Coatue Management, IDG Capital, Lightspeed China Partners, Qiming Venture Partners, and HongShan (previously known as Sequoia Capital China).
The startup plans to invest the new proceeds in its smart factory projects as well as in the R&D of all-aluminium car bodies and unibody casting — a technology Tesla is reportedly perfecting that would allow it to die cast nearly all the complex underbody of a vehicle in one piece, rather than using 400 parts in a conventional car.
Starting from Shanghai where the startup has set up its first showroom and delivery and service centre, ROX Motor targets to expand its brick-and-mortar stores across a total of 17 Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Chengdu before the end of 2023.
It currently employs over 1,000 people, over 75% of who are R&D professionals.
