LeSee
Today we celebrate the birth of ‘LeSee’,
owned by LeTV, China’s largest internet television company, often
compared to NetFlix. LeSee will have its public launch on the Beijing Auto Show next week.
For now the company focuses on two main
projects: Faraday Future in the United
States and the electric Aston
Martin Rapide in the United Kingdom. On the Beijing show LeSee
will also debut a new electric supercar concept, above, which seems to be a
slightly more realistic variant of the crazy FaradayFFZERO1 that debuted in
Las Vegas in January.
Interestingly, on the sketches the car
wears ‘LeCar’ badges. This name would make some sense with LeTV and LeSee, but
it also reminds us of a certain French
vehicle, which is by the le way completely
unknown in China, so maybe LeTV missed out on that.
The LeSee logo. LeSee can be ahcked in
two. Le comes from LeTV, and means ‘fun’ in Chinese. SEE is
short for ‘Super Electric Ecosystem’. That has all to do with the
faraway-future plans of the company; they want to build an entirely new
automotive ecosystem consisting of electric cars communicating full-time with
each other and with the wider world, connected-cars and connected-mobility in
one. The cars will use software and networks developed by LeSee, and the
vehicles will be manufactured in the United States and in China.
LeSee has a research facility in Beijing
and says it currently employs 750 people in the U.S. and China. LeTV/LeSee is the largest shareholder
in Faraday Future, but the exact
percentage is unknown. Things seem to go well; work on the new one-billion
dollar factory in Las Vegas has begun, and the first car,
likely an SUV, is expected in 2017. The company is also expected to make a
small-series supercar.
Developing electric supercars makes a
lot of sense from a Chinese perspective. Wealthy car buyers here are genuinely
interested in innovative electric supercars with loads of power. This is why so
many Chinese automakers are developing such cars. On the Beijing Auto Show we
expect this LeSee, a Beijing Auto
race-car based monster, the production version of the Qiantu K50,
and the manic TechRules 96.
If Apple were to build a one-million
dollar electric supercar the Chinese would buy them by the zillion, but Apple
doesn’t, and neither does Google, or any other tech company, leaving this
potentially lucrative market to the Chinese themselves.
Source : CarNewsChina
