In Depth: How a Regional Low-Speed Carmaker’s Big EV Dreams Crashed

In China’s furious push for its firms to climb industrial value chains, some are inevitably being left behind.

But the phenomenon rarely manifests as literally as in the case of Levdeo, a manufacturer of low-speed electric vehicles (LSEVs) that gambled big on a transition to conventional electric cars.

Now, the future of the troubled Weifang, Shandong-based carmaker is up in the air, after a bid to enter a government-mediated bankruptcy reorganization — a kind of bailout — was knocked back for unexplained reasons. Caixin understands no investor could be found, but that is not a legal basis for such a rejection.