Byton Raises $500M to Fund Electric Car Concept

Chinese electric car startup Byton announced Monday that it has raised an additional $500 million to advance its efforts, which include a new fully-autonomous sedan called the K-Byte.

The company also officially opened its global headquarters in Nanjing, China, adding to a global presence that includes a research and development center in Silicon Valley and a design center in Munich, Germany. The company’s first batch of prototype models is set to roll out in April 2019 for testing, with the pilot production program starting in the first half of 2019. A mass-production car is slated to enter the market at the end of 2019.

Byton has said it can offer its car for $45,000, which seems like a deal for the attractive, technology-packed vehicles. The company previously showed off an SUV dubbed the M-Byte, which it said will achieve an estimated 250 miles of range and 272 horsepower from a rear-mounted motor. A high-performance dual-motor version will push 476 horsepower for 325 miles, according to Byton.

The M-Byte will be the first production vehicle for the company, while the K-Byte is still a concept. Still, Byton believes it can bring the K-Byte to market with Level 4 autonomous tech by 2021.

 

[Peter Thomas]

BYD has already been making all electric cars in China for years. Warren Buffet invested in BYD years ago. My advice for Tesla going to Shanghai is to focus on the Chinese market as if it is a different market then the US market. Apple did not do this and continued to try to sell the pricy iphone in a very price sensitive market. Other lower priced Chinese phones became more popular than the iphone mostly because of pricing. Most Chinese are fairly practical and extremely frugal. Apple now has $150B in the bank but has lost the Chinese market because they were not willing to cut their absolutely huge profit margin on the iphone in China which is made very cheaply by Foxconn , their manufacturing subcontractor in China. I think with Elon's leadership, Tesla can do extremely well in China as Tesla manufacturing costs are continuously reduced and Tesla high quality cars with innovative features are built on a fully automated manufacturing line that can compete with low cost Chinese car manufacturers like BYD. But before ground is broken for building the Shanghai plant, I strongly recommend that Elon pushes Trump and China to get rid of the remaining tarifs that make it so difficult for US car manufacturers to compete fairly in China. I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things, however he is absolutely right that China has been using tariffs, currency controls and very advanced artificial intelligence to dominate the world economy. This can no longer be ignored if we all want to retain our freedoms we all take for granted in the democratic and free societies of the world. The attack on the Twin Towers in the financial district of NY was a wake up call. Wake up everyone.....