LeTV plots its foray into the auto world with electric car

Leshi Holding (Beijing) Co's super electric vehicle concept illustrates "LeOS is OK. Ready to drive" displayed on the dashboard. [Photo/China Daily]

Internet company developing cut-price "supercar" to tackle nation's air pollution

When word spread last week that Infiniti's former senior manager was joining Chinese Internet company Leshi Holding to develop a car manufacturing business, the company's share price surged.

On Jan 6, Chinese media reported that Lyu Zhengyu was joining Leshi Holding (Beijing) Co as the China head of the electric "supercar" project and that he would report directly to Jia Yueting, the company's chairman and president.

Lyu declined to give details and told the reporter to refer to the company information due to be released this week.

No personnel information was available from the company's marketing department by the time this paper went to press.

Lyu served Infiniti China as general manager from 2010 to 2013 and was appointed as Infiniti Asia and Oceania general manager in May 2013.

Leshi's business started with content streaming website letv.com.

The website is run by a subsidiary company Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp, which was established in 2004 and in 2010 launched on Shenzhen's ChiNext, a Nasdaq-style board comprised of mainly high-tech companies and those with high growth potential.

The business has now expanded to include smart TV sets and accessories, movie and TV show production and smart TV user interfaces.

The Internet company officially announced its electric car plan in December. Leshi's Le Telematics Co CEO He Yi said the forthcoming product would be a "smart super electric vehicle" offered around the world as a global product.

He said the Silicon Valley based automotive research and development team had been working on the car for nearly a year.

He said a joint investment with domestic carmaker Beijing Automotive Group Co was made into American company Atieva Inc in the summer of 2014.

Leshi is now the second largest shareholder of Atieva, after Beijing Automotive, which holds 25.02 percent of Atieva.

Atieva is the design and engineering company for Tesla Roadster, Audi R8 eTron and Chevrolet Volt.

He was confident that Leshi's products would beat those from Tesla Motors.

Leshi's chairman and president Jia Yueting wrote in his Sina Weibo microblog last month: "We will build the best electric cars to solve the problems of air pollution and traffic jams in China."

The company said its electric vehicle would be priced much lower than those currently on the market, as vehicle distribution costs would be cut dramatically by using their Internet sales channel, rather than dealership showrooms.

Analysts suggested Leshi could be a new player in the Chinese car market. Xu Hao, an iResearch Group analyst, said that the "smart super electric vehicle" might use Tesla models as a benchmark.

"The electric supercar project is going in a direction with great prospects and Leshi is very likely to have a supercar company standing apart from the Le Telematics subsidiary company," he said.

Business beyond a car

Leshi said its "supercar" would use its self-developed Le Operating System, or LeOS.

The company said the wireless Internet cloud system would transform the electric vehicle into a smart mobile device capable of autonomous driving, automatic parking and intelligent navigating.

The in-car telematics system will not be limited to the company's own product or hardware and several choices will be created from the system, according to Jia.

International Data Corp China's Research Manager Wang Yue wrote on Jan 8 that the core value of an in-car telematics system is in the big data collected from cars. Each hour a car may generate tens of gigabytes of dynamic data to be uploaded to the cloud. Therefore cloud computing based big data analysis could give conventional carmakers immense space to play.

The three major in-car operating systems that are widely used are Windows, Linux and QNX, and Android is evolving as a more entertaining alternative.

Leshi gave no indication when the new car may be ready for release.

Beijing Automotive's e-car

Atieva is working on a fully-electric model that will be priced at about 500,000 yuan ($81,770) for Beijing Automotive.

Hu Enping, brand and public relations officer at the carmaker's subsidiary Beijing Electric Vehicle, or BJEV, noted he could not say if the model was related to the Leshi "supercar". He said BJEV started R&D on the new model early last year prior to Leshi's plans.

Hu said the BJEV car is expected to be "more advanced than Tesla models in technology with a driving range of further than 400 km.

The badge it will carry is still under consideration".