Chinese Car Company Prepares Tesla Killer

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 1:50PM EST · Published Mar 18, 10:05AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Chinese Car Company Prepares Tesla Killer — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”625445″ placement=”ros”]One more company believes it can beat Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) at the luxury electric car business. According to Automotive News, a Chinese car firm working with an Italian design operation believes it will field a product in the next three years.

The car industry news medium reports:

Chinese electric vehicle startup Hybrid Kinetic Group says it will challenge Tesla with its H600 luxury sedan in the U.S. by the end of the decade. Hybrid Kinetic, earlier called HK Motors, showed off a concept preview of the car this month at the Geneva auto show. The sleek sedan, created by Italian design house Pininfarina, is “85 to 90 percent” of how the final car will look, board member Carter Yeung told Automotive News.

The production car will be powered by electric motors with a combined power output of 600kW (804 hp) fed by a battery pack that can be topped up on the move by a microturbine range extender, the company said.

[nativounit]

Pininfarina was founded in 1930 and is considered among the top high-end car designers in the world. Maserati is among its clients.

Hybrid Kinetic Group gets to join a long line of manufacturers and startups that include companies from BMW to General Motors. Each says it can take a large part of the market Tesla has dominated so far in the United States. Tesla is about to launch a mid-market car, the Model 3, that will cost about $30,000. This will allow it to sell more than 500,000 cars a year, according to its forecasts. While the figure is small, for the electric car industry, it would be impressive.

Tesla recently increased the funds necessary for it to have a chance to reach its goals. That will make the challenge for Hybrid Kinetic Group harder. The financing included “offerings of $250 million of common stock and $750 million aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due in 2022 in concurrent underwritten registered public offering.”

Tesla not only has the lead in the electric luxury car business, it also as a bank roll.

[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.