NextEV Co-President: Electric Supercar To Be Revealed Later In 2016

One of the co-presidents of the Chinese electric vehicle startup NextEV, Martin Leach, revealed in a recent interview that his company is aiming to reveal a new electric supercar sometime later this year.

The supercar will reportedly be fully functional at the time of its reveal, not simply a shell and concept. The interview as a whole was rather interesting, and also included the former motor-racing veteran revealing that the company intends to “do things that help people’s automotive lifestyles.” Whatever that means.

Leach stated: “When we launch the car it will not be a concept. It’s a car, it will be engineered and validated and you will see it driving at some point shortly after the introduction; certain lucky people will be able to drive it. The car will be a car which will be able to hold its own against the best of today’s competition. We want it to show what we can do. For sure, it will have a few surprises, it will not just be another cookie-cutter supercar.”

When asked about Tesla during the interview, Leach noted that he thought the firm had done a “brilliant job.” He continued, though: “I do think, though, that if normal car companies were the internet at 1.0, then Tesla is probably 2.0 and does some really good things like over-the-air software updates, but what we’re trying to be is 3.0.” (That echoes statements from Faraday Future, another EV startup backed by a Chinese billionaire.)

Leach claimed that NextEV would be “nothing less than a complete reboot of the car industry.”

Big words. It’s an easy thing to believe that, but actually following through on such a claim is no doubt a bit more complicated. (As evidenced by Tesla’s recent PR troubles following a number of widely publicized Autopilot accidents.)

Sister site Gas2 quotes Leach further:

We do want people to own their cars, but we want to make it fun again. We want to take out the pain points that people complain to us about, about the ownership experience today. Not just electric vehicles, but generally.

It (autonomous driving technology) can solve a lot of problems that we have today with society… (but) we want to support our people with a drivable lifestyle. A lot of people still want to drive their cars. It’s not all of one thing at the expense of the other; people still want to drive cars and have fun with that.

Related:

NextEV — Chinese Startup — Gets $500 Million of $1 Billion Targeted Funding

NextEV Signs Agreement With Nanjing Municipal Government For $463M Motor Production Facility