LinkTour to develop electric vehicles

Chinese carmaker LinkTour announced plans on Wednesday to make inroads into the country's booming new energy vehicle market, with five models expected to be released before 2020.

The carmaker, backed up by China's largest SUV producer Great Wall Motor, will focus on small, affordable electric vehicles, said its chairman Zhang Liping when the plans were unveiled in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

The first model, an SUV called K-One, will hit the market in November. It is expected to run up to 460 kilometers on one charge, said the carmaker. It added that four other models are scheduled to follow in 2019.

"We have set a goal to become a globally leading small electric car producer," said Zhang, who founded LinkTour's predecessor Yogomo in 2008.

Zhang said the carmaker's knowledge of the small-vehicle market in the past decade and Great Wall Motor's help in quality control and supplier management will give LinkTour a great advantage over its rivals in the market.

LinkTour has come up with battery swap solutions, which will prove popular among customers, because China has not built an adequate charging network, especially in smaller cities that the carmaker sees as its major markets.

Because of LinkTour cars' smaller sizes, their battery packs are lighter and easier to transport and replace, thus helping to ease the mileage anxiety that has been haunting electric car owners.

The carmaker said its focus on small models will also make it less dependent on government subsidies, because its models will be more affordable than most others in the market when the financial stimuli are stopped by the end of 2020.

China started to stimulate the new energy vehicle sector with financial stimuli in 2009 and tens of billions of yuan have since been spent.

Zhang Yongwei, a chief expert at China EV 100, an organization dedicated to promoting electric cars in China, said LinkTour's focus on the small electric vehicle segment will help to diversify choices for customers in the country and thus boost the development of the sector as a whole.

China has been the world's largest market for new energy vehicles since 2015. Last year, more than 770,000 such vehicles were sold, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. The association expects their sales to exceed 1 million this year.

Contact the writer at lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn