On the November 18, 2019, Byton announced that it had received a license to be a distributor in the state of California. In other words, Byton can sell cars directly to customers.
The company has established Byton Cars California, LLC, which will be used to sell the M-Byte in California, and also Byton Americas, LLC, which is supposed to facilitate retails sales eventually in the rest of the United States.
This is another step that the Chinese electric vehicle startup has taken to establish its presence globally, but is also one of many news stories of a Chinese brand establishing itself as a global player.
By getting the license, Byton is now closer to being able to sell and lease its M-Byte SUV by its 2021 launch date in the USA.
Byton’s present timeline for the launch of the M-Byte is 2020 for China and 2021 for the USA/Europe.
Reports also indicate that Byton will be using a retail strategy that mixes Byton-branded retail and service locations along with existing car dealers and service providers. We will have to wait to see how this retail method develops in the real world. Tesla, which followed the direct sales model, is still unable to sell cars in several states, and the only reason it can do so in several other states is because it doesn’t sell any cars through dealers.
Byton has been in the news for many reasons on sister site CleanTechnica lately. It’s establishment of a factory in Nanjing.
It recently opened its first store, in Shanghai.
It was a hot hit at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
The release of the M-Byte’s specs. The M-Byte will have two configurations — long range and standard range. The long range configuration has 435 kilometers (270 miles) of WLPT-rated range. The standard range configuration has 360 kilometers (224 miles) of WLPT-rated range.
Stay tuned to EV Obsession and CleanTechnica for news on Byton and all things cleantech.
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