On January 24, Wei Jun, chairman of Ranger Automobile, was frozen by the Shanghai Minhang District People's Court for 45 million yuan of equity on January 21 this year, and the executed company was Shanghai Ranger Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., with a freezing period of 3 years.
Before that, Ranger Cars had been without news for a long time.
Founded in 2014 by Huang Xiuyuan, a liberal arts graduate of the Communication University of China, the startup, which is known as "PPT Car", released the first car Ranger X in July 2015, a concept car that resembles a Tesla Model S, which caused widespread doubt at the time, because the Ranger X only released some data and did not launch a demonstration.
At the end of 2015, Wei Jun, who was attracted by Ranger X, officially joined Ranger Company and became the actual controller of the company. Public information shows that Wei Jun graduated from Nankai University, worked in the field of high-end intelligent chips at Tsinghua Tsinghua Unigroup, and served as the chairman of Xituo Industrial Group.
Wei Jun joined Ranger Motors with funds, and he also ambitiously declared in September 2016: "Musk himself knows that there is a 'Chinese Tesla company' called Ranger, and some shareholders have said that as long as we work hard enough, Ranger this electric car startup may make Musk sad in the future!"
Ranger Cars' goal at that time was to "be the first in China's electric vehicle field", "We don't want to just do the top three, can't take the city, and die without turning back", Wei Jun said.
Wei Jun
In April 2017, Ranger Auto signed a cooperation agreement with the Wuxing District Government of Huzhou City to build a Ranger Auto (Huzhou) Super Factory project in Wuxing District. The original goal of the project was to start construction in 2017 and launch a mass production model in 2019 with an annual production capacity of 200,000 units.
In October 2017, Ranger Auto also received a Series A financing of 1.22 billion yuan from Xinhua Silk Road Fund, Jingxing Tiancheng and other institutions, and in March 2018, they obtained a B round of financing of up to 5 billion yuan from Qianhai Wutong, China Environmental Protection Industry Co., Ltd., South Taihu Lake Construction Investment, Huzhou Donghong and other institutions. Five months later, they received a $350 million Series B+ investment from Gezhi Assets.
Everything looks like it's on the right track.
However, in 2019, Ranger Cars not only did not achieve mass production of cars, but also was exposed to rumors that the car factory was shut down.
In January 2020, Wei Jun stepped down as the legal representative of Shanghai Ranger Automobile Co., Ltd., the parent company of Ranger Motors, and was replaced by Wei Gongfang.
In April 2020, Li Wei, director of the strategy and marketing management department of Ranger Auto, was interviewed by the Daily Economic News, when he revealed that Ranger Auto was no longer in a hurry to mass-produce models, and even whether the first model would still be positioned as a high-end may change, and they are also deliberately slowing down the work of channel construction in order to save money.
All indications are that Ranger Cars was already in an embarrassing situation of not building a car and maintaining operations.
In 2020 and 2021, Shanghai Ranger Automobile Co., Ltd. was also sued by Hunan Xiangtian Construction Engineering Co., Ltd. and Zhejiang Engineering Construction Management Co., Ltd. due to contract disputes. The Wuxing District People's Court of Huzhou City, which accepted these lawsuits, could not even directly serve legal documents on the defendant's Ranger Car side, and could only convey the information of these cases to Ranger Cars through an announcement of 60 days.
A few years ago, when Huang Xiuyuan's car was in trouble, Wei Jun took the funds to do the "takeover man", and now Wei Jun still has not succeeded in the car-making project of the Ranger car, and it is likely that there will be no more receivers in the future. Perhaps in the near future, "PPT car" will usher in the finale.
Of course, we also hope that China's automotive industry will have more car-making players like Wei Xiaoli and fewer PPT car-making projects.