What happened to the Saab factories?
They are owned by a consortium called NEVS headed by a Swedish-speaking Chinese businessman ex-Volvo and associated with China's State Grid and large scale Chinese biomass projects collecting farm waste for energy - a claim to green credentials.
The owner is associated via State Grid with a Chinese battery plant (not BYD) that is reportedly oversubscribed making batteries for busses and they claim links to Japan - probably for battery IP and sub components, possibly for motors and electronics.
When last seen they were messing around trying to play Chinese city governments and the Swedish government from both ends, I suspect promising the Chinese Volvo-like auto manufacturing mad skills and IP to transfer to China and promising the Swedes an auto industry employment rennaissance - a plot that has publicly made SAAB Aero nervous about letting them use the SAAB brand at all.
It's a real shame because SAAB IMO is the single major car brand that had - and possibly has if guided back on the rails - a clean shot at going for it as a pure EV manufacturer completely unencumbered by the Innovators' Dilemma because SAAB has already gone bust as an ICE maker putting it way out ahead of every other big brand ICE maker that has yet to go bust before they too can even embark on competing with EVs capable of displacing ICE vehicles in the market on performance and price! And SAAB has a wicked mid-sized cabriolet design that does not compete head-on with Tesla's plans that would most definitely sell 120,000 units annually straight off the bat if brought in at a sensible range performance and price - which is definitely achievable before anyone but Tesla gets a look in.
Instead of that the current management immediately sought to reestablish an Innovators Dilemma by resurrecting a gas engined SAAB '95 and start courting dealers with it on the basis that an aging SAAB fan club thought that would be a good idea - and on the basis that they needed to do something to reconnect a supply chain and retain a labor force while they worked on an EV 'for customers that did not need to drive as far as the ones that would prefer to choose their gasoline version' - and so they 100% predictably went bust again when the fan club still thought the '95 was a great idea to make the '95 so long as someone else chose it over the decade and a half more advanced Hyundai Ceed at half the price - and while simultaneously a Chinese City for reasons undisclosed failed to advance the proceeds of a loan for working capital.
Anyway they managed to ditch thir major lenders through the Swedish courts in a restructuring deal and now a new Chinese City is apparently on the boil for an EV factory.
The SAAB Trolhattan plant is clean and basically stunning. About 120,000 annual capacity and there is apparently a NEVS rolling prototype EV that is essentially a converted SAAB '95 with a Chinese battery pack at about the level of a BYD E6 but with vehicle design from 2000 rather than 1977.
What they could have done (sell Swedish technology and clean air environmentalism to the world as an advantaged pure EV startup operating under a world-recognised automotive brand name) is a heartbreaking opportunity lost in my opinion. They could trounce Faraday Future if properly organized (with that plant they are a $billion ahead already).
Given how little progress they have made to move the needle in any direction it could possibly still happen subject to a total management strategy rethink.
Duly offered if anyone from NEVS is listening!
(Yes punctuation is for wimps /truth rant)
