Toyota has reached an agreement with Singulato Motors of China for selling its electric-vehicle technology to the latter in exchange of the priority right for purchasing the startup's "credit quota" for new-energy cars, according to a wire news of Reuters.
Reuters reported that the agreement will be publicized during the 18th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition opened on April 16, according to which Toyota will license its EV "eQ" design to Singulato, in response to China's new regulation demanding automakers to produce a minimum share of EV and other new-energy cars or purchase "credit quota" from other automakers, should they fail to do so.
Singulato will base on Toyota's "eQ" concept car to design a local model featuring competitive price and long cruising range to meet the need of the local market, scheduled for rollout in early 2021. Shen Haiyin, CEO of Singulato, noted that the agreement is tantamount to a vote of confidence from Toyota on Sigulato's prospects, according to Reuters.
Founded in 2014, Singulato has obtained funding support from Intel. Itochu also announced in Aug. 2018 plan to inject fresh fund for the startup.
The Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun reported on Dec. 19, 2018 that in order to comply with the aforementioned regulation on new-energy vehicle in China and other countries' CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) regulation, Toyota has notified its major auto-parts suppliers that it will speed up sales of electric cars, aiming to raise the sales amount to 2.35 million cars by 2020, 44% higher than the estimated number of 630,000 in 2018 and 23.7% of its projected sales of 9.89 million (excluding Daihatsu and Hino).