LeSee
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
LeSee was the electric and self-driving car brand of Chinese conglomerate LeEco, set up as a subsidiary in December 2014 with founder Jia Yueting as controlling shareholder. It unveiled the LeSEE Concept car in Beijing in 2016 and the LeSee Pro, broke ground on a planned $3 billion factory in Huzhou, Zhejiang, and relied on technology developed by Jia's other venture, Faraday Future.
02 / LeSee FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
LeSee died with LeEco's cash crunch. The $3 billion Huzhou factory never secured a vehicle-manufacturing permit, and Sunac's $2.2 billion emergency investment in January 2017 explicitly excluded the car business. CEO Ding Lei left in March 2017, Jia Yueting was forced out of LeEco in May 2017, and the brand was converted into a Variable Interest Enterprise under Faraday Future; the LeSEE story effectively ended in September 2017.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Product or service closed
after Sunac took LeEco and showed no interest in EVs, LeSEE was converted to a VIE under Faraday Future and that by September 2017 the LeSEE story basically ended—parent/ecosystem wind-down of the China EV unit.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Broke ground on a $3 billion factory in Huzhou in December 2016, targeting 200,000 cars a year, without a manufacturing permit.
- 02
CEO Ding Lei departed in March 2017; Zhang Hailiang served as CEO for about half a year.
- 03
Sunac's $2.2 billion January 2017 lifeline did not cover the car business.
- 04
Jia Yueting was forced out of LeEco in May 2017; LeSEE was folded under Faraday Future.
- 05
The LeSEE story effectively ended in September 2017.
- 06
No public loss figure was disclosed.