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EV startup launches new electric SUV with massive battery pack for ‘400 miles of range’

Two years ago, Thunder Power unveiled its first car at the Frankfurt Motor Show and this year, the Taiwan-based power-tool maker turned electric vehicle maker, unveiled its second vehicle on the same platform.

Thunder Power had some relative success as an electric power tool-maker, but now they have the ambition of using their experience building battery packs for tools to make electric vehicles.

They have a similar approach as Tesla’s – meaning that they aim to start with the higher-end of the market with more expensive luxury vehicles and build a premium sedan and a premium SUV on the same platform with the same powertrain, like Tesla’s Model S and Model X.

After unveiling the Thunder Power Sedan two years ago, they now unveiled the SUV in Frankfurt this year:

The vehicle features the same powertrain with a massive 125 kWh battery pack using thousands of cylindrical battery cells.

They claim that it enables a range of “up to 650 km NEDC” (400 miles), which would be impressive for such a large vehicle though the real-world range is likely lower.

When launching the brand in 2015, Thunder claims that they would launch the sedan in Europe in 2017 and in China in 2018, followed by the US, but that didn’t happen.

Now they have pushed the launch of the sedan to 2019 and they expect that the SUV will follow a year later.

They also brought the latest prototype of the electric sedan to Frankfurt:

The company has a manufacturing facility in Shaoxing, China, which they operate as part of a joint venture with the state.

They also signed an agreement to build a second manufacturing site based in Catalonia, Spain. In Europe, they were planning for the sedan to have a starting price of €65,000 (~$78,000 USD).

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

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