March 12 (SeeNews) - German electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Next.e.Go Mobile, which planned to build a factory in Bulgaria, has filed for insolvency amid industry challenges and capital market volatility, German media reported.
It is expected that other subsidiaries, including New York-listed Next.e.GO N.V., will initiate corresponding insolvency proceedings, German business news magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported last week.
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Next.e.Go Mobile intended to build three new micro-factories across Europe and the U.S., aiming to expand production of its small EVs for urban settings.
The company filed an investment proposal in 2022 to build a plant for the assembly of e.GO vehicles in the northern Bulgarian town of Lovech. The plant was expected to be fully equipped by the end of 2023, with full production capacity to be reached in the second half of this year.
In 2021, the project was said to be worth an estimated 280 million levs ($156.4 million/143.2 million euro), while the plant was projected to have the capacity to produce over 30,000 electric cars per year, with some 1,000 staff.
Previously, Next.e.Go Mobile's predecessor e.Go Mobile filed for bankruptcy in 2020 due to funding constraints and was later acquired by Dutch private equity house nd Group.
Next e.Go went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) and debuted on the New York Stock Exchange last October.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)