Aston Martin's pure-electric vehicle collaboration at risk

Aston Martin's collaboration with China's LeEco is reportedly at risk following news that the Chinese technological empire funding the development of new pure-electric technology has run out of cash.

Announcing the financial difficulties in a letter to his employees, billionaire owner Jia Yueting apologised to shareholders and declared he had slashed his own personal salary to just 15 US cents.

Yeuting's LeEco is the holding company that owns media companies, smartphones-makers and TV manufacturers had recently branched out into to car-making revealing an all-new LeSEE Tesla Model S-rival at the Beijing Auto show in April.

LeEco has also announced it is working with Faraday Futures and is in the process of developing its own autonomous vehicle -- but outside of China the biggest impact of the potential fallout of the financial difficulties will be felt by Aston Martin.

Work has already begun with the British car-maker to develop the firm's first pure-electric car, the RapidE that will eventually donate its pure-electric powertrain to the DBX SUV.

Initially it's thought LeEco will try and protect its automotive division by introducing mass redundancies in other parts of the business to tackle crippling debt.

Yeuting has already reportedly raised $US1 billion in capital from a consortium of investors to make his LeSEE Model S rival reality.

In the past stock market commentators have criticised the self-made billionaire's way of raising money for being too "risky".

Bloomberg reports that worries over Yeuting's financing model had already impeded the entrepreneur from launching the Faraday Future brand in Nevada, in the USA. According to the newswire, the federal Government is wary of issuing bonds to fund the creation of a new factory because it fears the cash would be funnelled into other projects.

Commenting in the letter sent to employees over LeEco's financial difficulties, Yeuting said: "We blindly sped ahead and our cash demands ballooned. We got over-extended in our global strategy. At the same time our capital and resources were in fact limited".

Despite the seriousness of the situation some analysts remain confident LeEco will recover. That’s because once the cutbacks have been made, they believe the tech giant's core business remains strong.

Aston Martin has yet to comment on whether the LeEco financial difficulties will affect the development of both the RapidE and DBX.