Ideanomics Inc. announced that its MEG Group, through its joint venture with iUnicorn, has finalized its first order of EV Taxis for the city of Chengdu. As part of the deal, MEG took over a previous order of 4,000 EV taxis from a third-party and helped facilitate the delivery of these taxis with the sales value of approximately US$50 million (RMB 356 million).

The remaining 11,000 taxis, with an additional sales value of approximately US$130 million (RMB 926 million), are part of an ongoing delivery schedule beginning 1 October 2019 and running through 31 December 2019—up to 12 months ahead of the contracted delivery deadline of December 31, 2020 for this initial order.

The EV Taxis are supplied by Geely Auto Group and the financing for the vehicles was provided locally by Sichuan Tianfu Bank Co Ltd. The taxis are part of a mandate in Sichuan province to convert all licensed taxis to clean energy vehicles.

In its 13 August 2019 press release Ideanomics announced that its MEG Group would be facilitating the sourcing of vehicles and associated financing of EV taxis for the City of Chengdu through a joint venture with iUnicorn (known as Shenma in China).

With this initial EV taxi order, our MEG group has demonstrated its capabilities in the rapid sourcing and financing of a large-scale EV order with significant sales revenues attached, included in which are the fees we receive from our preferred pricing and volume-based discounting from vehicle manufacturers. The completed delivery of 4,000 vehicles in Q3 has proven our model is efficient and beneficial to our clients and partners, and this will serve to provide additional confidence to the market that Ideanomics and its MEG Group are a trusted and reliable resource for large fleet owners looking to migrate their vehicles away from fossil fuels and onto clean energy.

—Alf Poor, CEO of Ideanomics

This initial order of 15,000 EV taxis is part of an agreement to supply a total of 89,000 EV taxis (now 93,000 taxis, with the additional 4,000 assumed from a third-party). The next tranche of 30,000 EV taxis is currently in finalization, with the order activities expected to begin in Q4 of 2019.

Ideanomics is a global Financial Technology (Fintech) company for transformative industries. Ideanomics combines deal origination and enablement with the application of technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and others as part of the next-generation of smart financial services. The company is headquartered in New York, NY, and has offices in Beijing, China. It also has a planned global center for Technology and Innovation in West Hartford, CT, named Fintech Village.