| Qiantu Motor | |
| Type: | Public |
| Industry: | Automotive |
| Founder: | Lu Qun (陆群) |
| Location City: | Suzhou |
| Location Country: | China |
| Area Served: | China |
Qiantu Motor is a Chinese automobile manufacturer. It is headquartered in Suzhou. It specializes in designing and developing electric vehicles.
In 2010, a Chinese engineer and manager Lu Qun, who worked in the 1990s at a local automotive concern BAW, decided to establish, together with his business partners, Beijing Great Wall Huaguan Automobile Technology Co., Ltd. The goal was to construct the first in the history of Chinese motoring sports car with a purely electric drive.[1] During the 2015 Shanghai Auto Show, the Qiantu brand presented its first production vehicle under the name of the 2-door, 2-seater coupé K50 in the form of a pre-production prototype.[2] A year later, during the Shanghai Auto Show 2016, the final, production-ready version of the vehicle was presented,[3] whose production at the plant in Suzhou started in 2017.
At the 2018 Beijing Auto Show, Qiantu Motor unveiled two new prototypes announcing a luxury grand tourer called Concept 1 and a small sports car called K20.[4] A year later, at the next edition of the capital China exhibition, Qiantu presented two more new studio announcements of new models that are to complement the manufacturer's portfolio in the future - K25 and Concept 2.[5] [6] In December 2018, Qiantu announced that, in addition to its domestic Chinese market, it also plans to start selling on the American market.[7] In April 2019, the manufacturer announced that K50 would be offered in partnership with the Californian company Mullen Technologies.[8] The vehicle with this market in mind is to be delivered to customers under the name Mullen Dragonfly after completing the production facilities in Brea,[9] which, however, was ultimately not implemented, and Qiantu Motors itself fell into crisis. In November 2020, the company ended production of the unpopular K50 after 2 years and suspended its operations.[10]
In June 2022, Qiantu returned to operations after a two-year break, presenting its second production model, an evolution of the 2018 K20 Concept prototype. The car took the form of an affordable, city hatchback with a fully electric drive, going on sale immediately after its premiere only in the Chinese market.[11] The company announced plans to restructure its operations, planning to expand its model range and expand its operations to foreign markets.