Laying staff and suspending the launch of electric vehicles in the United States… This is what the start-up car company SERES (formerly known as SF Motors) is experiencing. Recently, according to Electrek report, the founder of SERES, James Taylor, in a letter to employees, mentioned that the parent Chinese company SOKON is facing a complex automobile market environment in China, opening up new markets and launching new products in the United States seems out of place in the short term, so the above adjustments were made.
The background of SERES is a bit complicated. The strategy of the new energy vehicle of the parent company SOKON is based on the CN-US dual-base and multinational vehicle model. The China’s JinKang New Energy has been approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in October last year, became the ninth company obtained a car license; foreign countries are SERES mentioned above, which was registered in Silicon Valley in January 2016. The positioning is to build super electric vehicles, but SERES is now Incorporated into Jinkang New Energy and became its subsidiary.
In July last year, SERES released the brand new Chinese name “Jinguo EV” (SERES), and the pure electric SUV model SERES SF5 was also unveiled in China for the first time. According to the previous plan, SF5 will be the first to launch in the Chinese market, that is, the test drive experience will be opened in January 2019, presale in March, to be officially launched in the third quarter. However, from the current point of view, the progress is lower than previously expected, Jinkang SERES SF5 began to announce the pre-sale price in mid-April this year, the listing and delivery plan was also changed to the fourth quarter of this year, this time, it has made plan to suspend the promotion of the US market.
However, in the eyes of James Taylor, the change was created to enable the company to achieve short-term survival and long-term success. In the future, the US market is still the target pursued by SOKON. It is worth mentioning that SERES also acquired AM General’s plant in Indiana as a future production base in the United States, which has produced Hummer H2 and Mercedes-Benz R-class.
About Jinkang SERES:
