CHJ Automotive Announces Completion of 3 Billion Yuan Series B Funding Round; Existing Shareholder Source Code Capital Continues to Increase Stake, Bullish on Mobility 3.0 Era

源码资本·March 22, 2018·0·0

CHJ Automotive today announced the completion of a 3 billion yuan Series B funding round. The round was led by Matrix Partners China and the new energy fund under Shougang Fund, with follow-on investments from existing shareholders including Yintai Group, Source Code Capital, BlueRun Ventures, Future Capital, and Fancheng Capital. Taihe Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this round. Combined with its previous angel and Series A rounds, CHJ Automotive has raised a total of 5.755 billion yuan since its founding two and a half years ago.

CHJ Automotive today announced the completion of a 3 billion yuan Series B funding round. The round was led by Matrix Partners China and the new energy fund under Shougang Fund, with follow-on investments from existing shareholders Yintai Group, Source Code Capital, BlueRun Ventures, Future Capital, and Fancheng Capital. Taihe Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this round. Combined with previous angel and Series A rounds, CHJ Automotive has raised a total of 5.755 billion yuan since its founding two and a half years ago.

Regarding this funding round, Xiang Li, founder, chairman, and CEO of CHJ Automotive, stated: "CHJ Automotive is committed to creating high-quality mobility spaces. By applying advanced technologies such as electric drive, intelligent connectivity, and autonomous driving, we are pushing the transformation of automobiles from traditional fuel-powered transportation tools into future mobility spaces. While developing and manufacturing high-quality products, we also need to build strength for the future of mobility. CHJ Automotive's comprehensive capabilities in R&D, manufacturing, and supply chain have won full recognition from our investor partners, and we have reached strong consensus on the evolution of automobiles and the ultimate form of mobility."

Huadong Wang, partner at Matrix Partners China, said: "CHJ Automotive is a formidable team at the intersection of two critical areas that Matrix has long focused on: new manufacturing and intelligent mobility. Xiang Li's team has deep market insights and thorough preparation, combined with extremely high execution efficiency, working together to create the finest urban daily mobility tools and systems. We are delighted to participate in CHJ Automotive's development."

Shougang Fund stated: "New energy vehicles and components are among Shougang Fund's key focus areas. The CHJ Automotive team is exceptional. We are optimistic about CHJ Automotive's product capabilities and operational efficiency, and believe CHJ Automotive can provide consumers with high-quality future mobility products. Going forward, both parties will expand cooperation in mobility and other areas."

Xingshi Wang, executive director at Source Code Capital, said: "Smart vehicles and intelligent mobility will become two massive waves reshaping the mobility industry. CHJ Automotive's in-depth R&D in intelligent mobility, forward-looking thinking, efficient execution, and positioning across the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain all give it the potential to become a leader in the future mobility space. Partnerships with mobility platforms will accelerate the rapid development of autonomous driving technology, opening up even broader market opportunities for the future. Source Code Capital firmly believes in the CHJ Automotive team and will continue to support technology-driven 'Intelligence+' enterprises in their continuous innovation and development."

CHJ Automotive has built an R&D and supply chain team of nearly 1,000 people, efficiently advancing product development and mass production preparation. Its intelligent R&D team alone has grown to over 300 people, focusing on intelligent systems, intelligent services, and autonomous driving systems. To date, the autonomous driving assistance system developed by CHJ Automotive has accumulated 300,000 kilometers of real-world road testing. This figure continues to grow as road testing progresses.

Ruyi Guo, founding partner of Taihe Capital, said: "Building cars is an extremely complex undertaking that tests a team's comprehensive capabilities. The CHJ Automotive team combines exceptional user-demand-oriented product capabilities, top-tier traditional automotive design and manufacturing expertise, strong support from global first-tier supply chain brands, and leading intelligent and data-driven teams. These combined capabilities ensure that CHJ Automotive's high-quality products are rigorously controlled and delivered on schedule at every critical juncture, and secure CHJ Automotive's advantageous position in the Automotive 2.0 era. We look forward to CHJ Automotive becoming a new 'Intelligent Manufacturing in China' giant."

Currently, CHJ Automotive's first mid-to-large luxury SUV has completed styling design, engineering design and simulation, and mule vehicle testing. The first batch of engineering prototype vehicles will roll off the line next month and begin various functional calibration tests and real-world road testing. In the second half of this year, CHJ Automotive will officially unveil this SUV and its new brand.

To ensure that its products combine advanced technology with high mass-production reliability, CHJ Automotive has established an international supply chain system and formed strategic partnerships with multiple top-tier domestic and international suppliers including Bosch Group, Valeo, CATL, Faurecia, and United Automotive Electronic Systems. These supplier partners will provide CHJ Automotive with the latest generation of product solutions, laying the foundation for high-quality mass production of CHJ Automotive's first SUV.

Recently, CHJ Automotive reached a strategic partnership with DiDi. The two parties will carry out in-depth cooperation in developing intelligent electric vehicle products specifically for shared mobility scenarios, intelligent fleet operations and services, and large-scale application of autonomous driving, jointly exploring the future of mobility.

According to the cooperation agreement, CHJ Automotive and DiDi will jointly establish a joint venture company and form a team. Through deep integration, both teams will create entirely new mobility products and services. Among these, the electric vehicle products custom-built for shared mobility will break from traditional EV product concepts, adopting entirely new design language and vehicle forms. The unique cabin layout and design will make them more suitable for shared mobility, delivering a better mobility experience while elevating mobility efficiency to new levels.

CHJ Automotive's development pace and strategic layout differ from other new car-making forces, and the reason behind this lies in founder Xiang Li's unique insights into the future evolution of the automotive industry.

In Xiang Li's view, as automotive industry technology advances and productive forces evolve, profound impacts will be felt on automotive business models and the core capabilities required of automakers. And after the Automotive 1.0 era, centered on "fuel drive + driving tool," has lasted for over 100 years, the Automotive 2.0 and 3.0 eras are gradually arriving.

In the Automotive 2.0 era, electric drive will replace fuel drive, making "three electric" R&D capabilities one of the essential capabilities for automakers in the 2.0 era. Furthermore, due to advances in intelligent technology, intelligent services will replace traditional after-sales services in their position within the production relationship. Therefore, Automotive 2.0 enterprises need strong intelligent R&D and service capabilities, with demand for related talent even exceeding that of traditional automotive engineering R&D. Thus, from its founding, CHJ Automotive determined that it must independently develop the entire intelligent system and service stack, and has built up substantial relevant talent reserves.

Finally, regarding the Automotive 3.0 era, Xiang Li believes its arrival is accelerating. Autonomous driving will be one of the earliest large-scale commercial applications of artificial intelligence, and automotive business models will be completely transformed, with transaction-by-vehicle-price sales evolving into transaction-by-mileage. At the same time, since human driving will no longer be needed, the time originally spent driving will be fully liberated, making in-vehicle intelligent services even more critical. For Automotive 3.0 enterprises, merely developing vehicles is far from sufficient. Whether for autonomous driving capabilities or intelligent service capabilities, data from vehicles actually operating in mobility scenarios is needed for computation and iteration. Therefore, Automotive 3.0 enterprises must possess mobility service operation capabilities to ensure they can achieve continuous growth through data-driven development.

Judgments about industry evolution and endgame scenarios are crucial to a company's strategic layout, Xiang Li said: "Different stages of automotive industry development demand different capabilities from participating enterprises. For CHJ Automotive, the first priority is to build high-quality products and truly deliver on intelligence, seizing the Automotive 2.0 era. AI R&D and data accumulation need to be grounded in mobility services — this is why we have made early moves in autonomous driving and mobility. The partnership with DiDi will become an important step for CHJ Automotive toward Automotive 3.0."

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