Saab And Its Multi-Billion Dollar Electric Vehicle Deals

Here’s more ‘Swede’ news – It’s been a while since we’ve heard of Saab. As a matter of fact, I wager some didn’t even know of its existence. Saab Automobile was part of Saab AB (later Saab Group), an aerospace and defense company known for such objects as the Gripen fighter jet and missile systems.

In the 70s and 80s (if anyone can remember), there were numerous Saab 900s roaming the streets of Kuala Lumpur. The Saab 900 was an icon and exudes the company’s aerospace heritage with the deeply curved windscreen to provide great visibility and a body profile similar to a cross-section of an aeroplane’s wing.

But the company fell into financial trouble and after a few botched purchase attempts by various companies, it finally ended up in the hands of National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), a Chinese-backed company, in 2012.

That didn’t exactly get the Saab brand off the ground, producing only a handful of cars which had a hard time meeting new safety standards but the new owner has been busy getting Saab out of the mud and last month, announced that it had signed a deal worth US$12 billion to supply 150,000 electric cars for China’s Panda New Energy, an EV leasing company, by 2020. The deal also sees NEVS provide a further 100,000 EVs at an undisclosed date.

The EV will be based on the last Saab 9-3 which is built on GM’s Epsilon platform. The electric 9-3 will be built at the former Saab factory in Trollhättan, Sweden but NEVS said it has plans to build cars in Tianjin, China as well, which makes more economic sense seeing the biggest customer is there. NEVS also said it plans to produce 4 new models based on the Phoenix platform which was never used due to financial trouble.

Aside from the Panda contract, NEVS recently entered into a US$1 billion agreement with China Volant Industry Co (Volinco) to supply 20,000 EVs for its company fleet. Volinco is in the aerospace equipment and technologies business.

With such contracts, it should jolt some life back into Saab (that’s if they can agree with Saab Group on the name use). And with this sort of production numbers, will China become the global leader for electric vehicles?