Evergrande and Hofer Powertrain form joint venture

Evergrande and Germany’s Hofer Powertrain Group have signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Stuttgart, Germany.

As per the agreement, the two parties have established a joint venture named Evergrande Hofer Power GmbH,. Xu Jiayin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Evergrande Group, and Johann Hofer, Founder and CEO of the German Hofer Group, attended the event along with senior executives.

Founded in 1980, Hofer Powertrain is the international leader in automotive power engineering. It is one of the top powertrain design and production company with presence in countries like Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy and Austria. The company's system competence ranges from internal combustion, hybrid to fully electrical solutions. It has 15 research institutes and 4 production bases. It has more than 800 research experts and professional engineers. It has long cooperated with world-renowned car companies such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Jaguar, Lamborghini and Fiat Chrysler.

According to the agreement, Evergrande will hold 67% of the joint venture company and Hofer will hold 33% of the shares. The joint venture company will take advantage of Hofer's cutting-edge technology and advanced R&D manufacturing team to develop integrated Powertrain core technology. Johann Hofer, Founder of Hofer Powertrain, will serve as the Chairman of the joint venture company and also look after the R&D and production base in China.

The Evergrande Group has been looking to tap into the growing EV market in China from quite some time. The Group is the owner of NEVS and has also made acquisitions such as Protean Electric and Cenat New Energy Co to position itself strongly in the highly competitive EV market.