WELTMEISTER

You may not have heard of WM Motor or Weltmeister yet, and that’s okay. It actually happens to be one of the highest-funded EV startups in China.

Last autumn, the five-year-old startup raised 10 billion yuan (~$1.5 billion) worth of outside investments. The money raised is to help cover R&D, marketing, and the expansion of its sales channel.

Many of Weltmeister’s competitors like NIO, Xpeng, and Tesla are publicly owned entities on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). After multiple waves of tremendous funding, industry professionals thought it was a matter of time before WM Motor announced an IPO in New York.

The company instead deviated from its EV competitors, and opted to list on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Star board in 2021 instead of in New York.

In choosing the mass market over arguably saturated luxury, WM Motor is taking some risk. However, if it pays off, Weltmeister could quickly jump miles ahead of its competitors in sales based on practicality.

This strategy is based on an informed approach from Weltmeister. The company has previously stated that parents with young children make up 69% of its customer base. To that note, competitors like NIO and Li Auto must outsource a majority of their manufacturing. Weltmeister, on the other hand, already has its own production footprint in place, with room to increase output - link