The latest electric vehicle startup to cash in on a new wave of hype and investment in the space is Li Auto, a five-year-old Chinese company that started trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday after raising $1.1 billion in an initial public offering. It’s the second Chinese EV startup to become a publicly traded company in the United States, following Nio’s 2018 IPO and subsequent listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Another, XPeng, will reportedly be next.
With Tesla recently becoming the world’s most valuable automaker, there is suddenly a renewed focus on funding EV startups. Fresh money has been rushing into the likes of Rivian, Nikola, Fisker, Karma, and even suppliers like Velodyne and Hyliion over the last few months from both the…