[ad_1]
The race is set to build and ship more economical electric cars, but today, one of the most ambitious startups in the industry has announced some important changes that highlight some of the challenges for this to become a reality. Byton, the Chinese start-up of electric cars, announced today that Carsten Breitfeld, former CEO of BMW and co-founder of Byton, who had been CEO and past president, left the company "to launch in a new venture in the start-up sector. "
To compensate for this news, Byton said he was currently recruiting for a new CTO, he will close his Series C financing – an amount of $ 500 million, according to this January report – this summer, and is on the right track. way for the production of its multiple byte. 4X4 vehicle for Q4 2019. The company recently said that it was considering an IPO. Its business is currently valued at approximately $ 4 billion and has 50,000 customers, half in China and half in the United States.
"Thanks to our founding team and all employees, we are on the right track and look forward to delivering the M-Byte this year to customers in China, then to the US and Europe in 2020," said Byton co-founder and current CEO, Dr. Daniel Kirchert. "Carsten helped build a strong BYTON brand and bring the right people to advance our start-up. We are now focusing on our main goal, which is to bring the first BYTON series production model into production in 2019, with our strong team and partners.
It is unclear who oversees the technical aspects of the activity in the meantime. It does not appear that there was an official CTO before, but before Byton, Breitfeld was vice president of engineering at BMW. Dick Abendroth, another BMW engineer, left Byton in October of last year to become Continental OEM CTO.
Byton was originally created as Future Mobility Corporation, as a joint venture between Harmony Auto, Tencent and Foxconn, which put Breitfeld and Kirchert (pictured below) in the place of co-founders and executives from the company. To date, it has raised approximately $ 700 million, the latest being $ 500 million, closed in June 2018.
According to some sources, the company had run out of money since the end of last year, balancing the capital-intensive construction of new vehicle technologies and new vehicles at startup (which is no mean feat). if you consider that its competitors are among the largest companies in the world). around the world), with the company currently employing some 1,600 people – many of whom have been chosen from existing car manufacturers and are therefore expensive.
Byton is not the only electric car maker to have attempted to avoid unexpected obstacles to its growth. Earlier this year, Tesla reduced its workforce to streamline its own production and made many sudden decisions regarding its retail strategy to reduce costs.
For the new generation of vehicles, it's not just 100% electrical technology that is tricky to integrate cost-effectively and efficiently, but the fact that these investments are offset by other major vehicle software initiatives, and especially autonomous technology.
Many believe that the industry inevitably leads to autonomous vehicles, but we are now a long way off and the development of its features poses many security problems and other obstacles, and a complete picture of its appearance is Always moving. target. Byton, for one, is currently working with a third party, Aurora, for a self-driving technology for its vehicles.
We contacted Byton to ask who was currently acting as the CTO of the company and if they could provide more details about the C series or its evaluation. We will update this post as we learn more.
Source link
