beyondbrics

When Terry McAuliffe, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s favourite fundraiser, first saw a China-made electric car on the streets of London, he decided he just had to take it for a spin. “I’m not a carjacker – can I drive your car around the block?” he asked the startled owner of the “mycar”, a 726kg electric vehicle designed by Hong Kong-based EuAuto Technology.

The owner relented and, after a short test drive, Mr McAuliffe decided his own electric car company, GreenTech Automotive, would track down and buyout the mycar’s manufacturer. Last week, while visiting Hong Kong as part of a delegation led by Gary Locke, US commerce secretary, GreenTech Automotive closed the deal for an undisclosed sum.

Made across the border in southern China, mycars have been sold in the UK, Austria, Denmark, France and Austria. Mr McAuliffe’s dream is to mass-produce the mycar – along with other models designed by GreenTech Automotive – in the US. To do so, he is looking to raise as much as $1bn.

“Raising capital is something I’m pretty good at,” said Mr McAuliffe, a serial entrepreneur who started his first business when he was 14 and retired a wealthy man at the age of 35. He noted that if he could raise money for Jimmy Carter in 1980, which he did for the deeply unpopular president’s doomed re-election campaign, he could raise money for anything.

“Our focus is providing a green car in America,” Mr McAuliffe added. It is now just a matter of time before the mycar arrives in the US, on its roundabout journey from southern China via London.