By ZHANG Mingrui
After months of being locked out, the staff of a troubled Chinese EV maker Weltmeister Motors (WM) have started to return to work as usual.
As operations appear to be resuming, long-suffering distributors are finally getting some of the spare parts they need for day-to-day servicing needs.
A WM dealer in Beijing told Jiemian News Sunday that it had received basic disposable items like AC filters and lubricating oil from WM for the first time this year. The dealer is now able to provide some basic maintenance service to what few WM owners there are in the city after months of suspension.
But the staples of vehicle maintenance - batteries, light units and engine parts - are still out of stock. The dealer said WM will not make any promises on whether or when these parts will be made available again.
The shortage of parts could prove irrelevant in any case. Most workers at the dealer’s shop left for Spring Festival and never returned, so there is no one to repair vehicles even if parts suddenly become available.
Frustrated WM owners who are unable to get their cars fixed have filed many complaints but so far, nothing has been resolved. Shanghai Consumers Council went so far as to caution consumers to think twice before buying a WM car.
Founded in 2015, WM was a top-three EV maker until 2019. The company had closed 12 financing rounds, raising 30 billion yuan (US$4.4 billion), more than Nio and Li Auto combined before they went public.
The government lavished cash on the startup. Local governments more or less paid for factories in Zhejiang and Hubei provinces.
On March 7, WM said some 100 dealerships nationwide would gradually recover. WM delivered 22,500 cars in 2020, and 44,200 in 2021 while other manufacturers were growing much faster. WM has not revealed its 2022 delivery stats, but open data suggests the company sold less than 30,000 vehicles. The factories are operating at 20 percent capacity.
WM is said to have secured a 3-billion-yuan (US$440 million) injection which will allow the company to pay off salaries and overdue fees to suppliers.
