German subsidiary of e-car maker Byton has filed for insolvency

This means that not only the American offshoot but also the German one is out of the game. It remains to be seen whether the Chinese e-car will still come.

Byton GmbH has filed for insolvency in Munich. Insolvency proceedings were opened at the local court on Tuesday. Munich-based lawyer Michael Bauer has been appointed as the insolvency administrator.

Byton was co-founded by former German and French BMW managers. The aim was to compete with Tesla with an electric SUV with a range of more than 500 kilometers for around 40,000 euros. The Chinese company had subsidiaries in Germany and the USA. All German and US employees have already been made redundant, including around 70 people who worked at the plant in Ismaning near Munich.

The coronavirus pandemic and the associated canceled orders are officially to blame for the shutdown. "We never found out the real reasons, but the fact is that firmly promised money tranches from business partners were not transferred," says a high-ranking ex-employee of the Wirtschaftswoche. In total, this amounted to several hundred million dollars. "As a result, we were no longer able to pay our suppliers, there were delivery stops and layoffs," says the former manager.

There were already signs of Byton's demise at the beginning of February . At that time, the company closed its Munich plant because it could no longer pay the rent. The start-up had apparently been experiencing financial problems since mid-2020 and the CEO at the time, Daniel Kirchert, is said to have fled to Hong Kong. He has since joined the Chinese Evergrande Group as "Executive Vice President" of the Evergrande Auto brand, reports Electric car news. This means that the German manager is once again responsible for electric cars.

Foxconn, an Apple contract manufacturer from Taiwan, invested 200 million dollars in Byton in January. A plant in Nanjing is apparently ready, but production is not yet underway. It remains to be seen whether a Byton car will ever roll off the production line.