Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Nov. 8 (Xinhua)-- Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) is in talks to invest at least $250 million in Chinese electric carmaker Chinese Express (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 1.82 billion yuan), Bloomberg reported.

PIF could buy the company at a valuation of $3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. A deal could be reached as early as this year, they said, but it could take longer as the terms are still being finalised.

It may be a bit strange to say that Chinese American Express, but when it comes to Gaohe Automobile, you may understand it. In addition to the Gaohe brand, Chinese American Express is also involved in self-driving car technology and intelligent transportation business. The company has an intelligent assembly plant in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, and a parts factory in Jinqiao, Shanghai.

It is worth mentioning that as early as June this year, Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment announced that it had signed an agreement worth 5.6 billion US dollars (currently about 40.768 billion yuan) with Chinese Express to jointly develop, manufacture and sell electric vehicles.

In fact, PIF has invested heavily in electric vehicles and other clean technologies.

PIF announced a joint venture with Foxconn on November 3 last year to produce electric cars in Saudi Arabia. On the same day, the chairman of PIF announced the launch of Ceer, Saudi Arabia's first electric vehicle brand. Ceer plans to develop mass-market cars and SUV, with the goal of delivering the first electric vehicles by 2025.

PIF invested US $1 billion (currently about 7.28 billion yuan) in Lucid Group in 2018, making it its largest shareholder ever since. Today, the fund owns more than 60 per cent of Lucid Group. Earlier this year, Lucid Group confirmed that PIF would invest an additional $915 million in it. At the end of January, there were rumors that PIF might seek to acquire the rest of the Lucid group.

In October, it emerged that PIF and Hyundai would spend more than $500m to build a highly automated car manufacturing plant in Saudi Arabia. Under the agreement, PIF will own 70 per cent of the new joint venture and Hyundai will hold the remaining 30 per cent. The joint venture aims to produce 50,000 vehicles a year, including internal combustion engines and electric vehicles.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.