Chinese developer China Evergrande Group has been known for developing properties into water companies or soccer clubs. Bloomberg reported that it is currently looking for ways to take on Elon Musk's Tesla and enter the electric vehicle market with the target of becoming the 'biggest manufacturer' in the world in just three to five years.
The group is looking to diversify from its real estate roots into other fields. A statement released on its website said that it would start selling EVs "soon." Its chairman, Hui Ka Yan, added that Evergrande has finished positioning itself in the electric-vehicle industry chain, and would begin manufacturing since it is already armed with the advanced technology needed to create these EVs.
The vision for Evergrande would be to become the "biggest and the strongest" player in the electric vehicle market. It plans to make that move within three to five years, challenging Musk and Tesla Inc, which had been in the EV business for a long time. They had only managed to break into the profit margin only recently.
While Evergrande sets its sights on competing with Tesla, the vehicle manufacturer had plans of its own. According to Yahoo FInance, the car company is taking a long, hard look at creating its own rideshare service to rival similar companies such as Uber and Lyft. Tesla's Elon Musk also added that the service should launch by the end of this year.
The rideshare service of Tesla would enable customers to loan out their cars to users, similar to how Uber does it. The service, however, aims to take its "ride" service higher with a fleet of self-driving electric vehicles that can go to where passengers are and pick them up. These comments and more were made as Tesla's Musk shared the company's third-quarter earnings.
Tesla, however, isn't the only one planning about a fleet of self-driving cars servicing the public. Waymo and General Motors have these plans as well, but here is where their cars are different--Tesla is intent on using camera and radar to guide their cars, while Waymo and GM plan to rely on LiDAR sensors, using laser light to measure the distance from other objects on the road.
Perhaps, Evergrande would be Tesla's main competition in Asia and its regions. However, it remains to be seen whether it can complete the cars by June, a target it hopes to achieve, whether they are only samples or mass-production models.
