Saab 9-3 to be brought back from the dead
Swedish sedan returns as a China-only, pure-electric vehicleBankrupt Saab’s new owner, National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), has announced it has signed a $16 billion dollar deal to supply a Chinese leasing firm 150,000 pure-electric versions of the Saab 9-3, which went out of mass production back in 2012.
A very limited production of the 9-3 was undertaken in 2013 at Saab’s former Trollhattan manufacturing facility in Sweden for the Chinese market before financing ran out but now, with the announcement of the deal, full production can restart.
NEVS has confirmed it plans to hire “hundreds of staff” to complete the 150,000-vehicle order from Panda New Energy.
As well as the pure-electric Saab 9-3s that all need to be delivered before 2020, NEVS has announced that an order for another 100,000 EVs had been placed, but did not go into specifics about who had ordered them, or what vehicles had been ordered.
Commenting on the deal, NEVS vice-chairman Stefan Tilk said: "This is a strategic collaboration for Nevs not only in terms of the numbers of vehicles, but it is also an important step to implement our vision and new business plan”.
Majority Chinese-owned NEVS acquired Saab’s assets back in 2012 after the Swedish car-maker was declared bankrupt.
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