On 27 July, the Nanning Qingxiu District People’s Court opened bidding on Alibaba’s judicial auction platform for the complete set of production machinery at Nezha Auto’s Nanning base — 467 pieces of vehicle manufacturing equipment with an assessed value and starting price of just over $60 million yuan.
The equipment belongs to two Nanning project companies under Hozon New Energy Auto (Nezha), located in the Lingli Industrial Park. The lot covers stamping lines, assembly robots, vehicle inspection lines and the full suite of EV manufacturing kit. The auction stems from multiple debt enforcement actions: local Nanning enterprises are pursuing over $45 million in unpaid trade debts, while Nanning Industrial Investment Group won a lease dispute judgment with nearly $130 million in claims outstanding. Under this multi-layered debt pressure, the court seized the company’s own equipment to satisfy creditors.
Notably, the land and factory buildings were fully funded by Nanning state-owned capital and remain under local government ownership; only the automaker’s own mechanical equipment is being liquidated.
In 2019, Hozon New Energy signed a strategic partnership with the Nanning municipal government, establishing the Nezha Auto Nanning production base. Within that framework, Nanning state capital provided land and financing support, with a planned total investment of $3.5 billion yuan. During implementation, local state capital cumulatively injected $2.4 billion in equity participation plus $550 million in targeted subsidies. The base was designed for an annual capacity of 100,000 pure-electric vehicles and commenced production at the end of 2021. At its sales peak, Nezha outsold NIO, Li Auto and XPeng to claim top spot among China’s new-energy vehicle startups.
But the market turned fast. From 2023 onwards, brand sales declined steadily. By early 2025, monthly retail volume had fallen to barely over 100 units. The company accumulated losses exceeding $18.3 billion yuan between 2021 and 2023. In June 2025, Hozon entered bankruptcy reorganisation proceedings, with over 1,000 creditors filing claims totalling $26.58 billion yuan. Production at its three bases — Tongxiang, Yichun and Nanning — has been suspended. State-owned investors in Zhejiang and Jiangxi have each filed claims worth hundreds of millions of yuan, much of which may prove unrecoverable.
Read the original report (Sohu IT)
*Translated and adapted from Sohu IT (it.sohu.com).*