Saab

Like a punch-drunk prize fighter rising from the mat, Saab Automobile appears to have some rounds left. As The Times reported, the company was acquired on Wednesday by National Electric Vehicle Sweden, representing Chinese, Japanese and Swedish stakeholders, and could produce cars again at its base in Trollhattan, Sweden, as early as late next year, according to the new owners.

Mikael Ostlund, a spokesman for the investor group, said in a telephone interview that Saab would initially build electric cars for the Chinese market, but with the contingency of international expansion, should the market warrant it. “The Chinese government plans to invest heavily in the infrastructure that will reinforce the market for electric vehicles,” Mr. Ostlund said.

An emphasis on electric mobility is not surprising, given the Chinese government’s aggressive sales targets for hybrid and purely electric cars. But like many aspects of the new arrangement, it is unclear who might provide the power to propel those E.V.’s.

The battery supplier Boston-Power, founded by Christina Lampe-Onnerud, who is also the chairwoman, supplied Saab’s ePower program, which consisted of a fleet of E.V.’s based on the 9-3 SportCombi wagon. Though plans called for 70 ePower wagons in the test fleet, it’s uncertain how many were actually built before the curtain came down on the automaker last year.

Boston-Power claimed that its 35.5-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion packs would power the SportCombis for 124 miles, charge in three hours and contribute to a zero-to-60 time of less than 10 seconds.

“Saab is having a revival moment,” Ms. Lampe-Onnerud, a native of Sweden, said in a telephone interview. She said she had not been directly contacted by National Electric Vehicle, but she agreed with Mr. Ostlund’s assessment of the E.V. market in China, saying the country would be an industry leader. “It probably will be for some time,” she said.

Mr. Ostlund said he did not know whether National Electric Vehicle would tap the existing work of the ePower program, but noted that the company planned to utilize “Japanese electric vehicle technology and expertise.”

Steven Rossi, a former communications manager at Saab, cautioned that many of the mechanical pieces that distinguished the automaker would probably not survive the transition to new ownership. “It may be an acquisition of Saab, but it’s really more like a ground-zero start-up with some hardware included,” he said in a telephone interview.

The first battery car planned by National Electric Vehicle would be based on the existing 9-3 model. The company bought rights to the 9-3 platform and that of the PhoeniX concept.

Mr. Ostlund declined to say how many cars were likely to be built in 2014, but he noted that Saab’s factory in Trollhattan had the capacity to produce 200,000 cars a year. “Production will be based on market demand,” he said.