In the world of corporate Lazarus acts, Dewan Farooqueue Motors is trying its umpteenth attempt at emerging from a 15-year slumber, claiming to have found the key to resurrection: electric vehicles (EVs). Yes, the same Dewan Farooque Motors that sputtered into obscurity following the 2008 financial crisis is now back, boldly asserting that it is ready to revolutionize Pakistan’s automotive industry by assembling EVs. What could possibly go wrong?
The timing is impeccable—EVs are all the rage globally, and Dewan Farooque seems to be hoping that some of this green energy glow will rub off on its dusty, long-idled facilities. In case you’ve forgotten, this is the company that once sold a smattering of Korean sedans to the Pakistani market – the Hyundai Santro – and light trucks – the Kia Shehzore – before being relegated to the graveyard of defunct manufacturers. Now, they are banking on electric vehicles to reignite their fortunes. If this sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
According to the company, they are working with a previously unheard-of manufacturer named ECO-Green Motors to bring affordable EVs to Pakistan, a country where public infrastructure for electric cars is virtually non-existent, power outages are part of daily life, and consumers are famously wary of new technology. But hey, who needs charging stations when you have enthusiasm, right? Dewan Farooque appears to believe that it can leapfrog over all the obstacles, despite having been inactive for over a decade in an industry that has since moved light-years ahead.
Their bold claims raise a few questions—chief among them: Why now? After 15 years of doing nothing, what suddenly qualifies Dewan Farooque Motors to lead Pakistan’s EV revolution? The company has not exactly been a beacon of innovation or operational success in the past, yet here it is, suddenly ready to compete in one of the most cutting-edge segments of the global auto market. It is a bit like an old flip phone company announcing a comeback by manufacturing the next iPhone.
Of course, assembling cars is not the same as building a brand, let alone creating consumer trust. Dewan Farooque’s track record isn’t exactly inspiring confidence. After all, when a company disappears from the map for 15 years, people tend to forget it existed at all. But apparently, Dewan’s management is banking on the public having short memories and even shorter patience, hoping that the allure of electric cars will blind everyone to the glaring logistical and operational gaps in this revival.
As for the actual assembly process, details are scant. How does a company that has been out of commission for over a decade suddenly pivot to EV assembly? Dust off the old assembly lines, slap a few EVs together, and hope for the best? The silence on how exactly Dewan plans to overcome the vast technological and supply chain challenges that come with EV manufacturing is deafening.
Then there is the mystery of exactly who is ECO-Green Motors and what is the Honri brand of electric vehicles? It sounds like brand that is plausibly Chinese, like the brands many of its rival auto assemblers have gone into business with. But there is no record of Dewan Farooque’s partner being a major manufacturer of electric vehicles in any country in the world.
And then, of course, there is the financial question. Dewan Farooque Motors was hardly a bastion of fiscal health when it closed shop in 2008. How it plans to finance this grand foray into EVs—an endeavour that even the most established automakers struggle to fund—remains unclear. Perhaps they are counting on the fact that “electric vehicles” is a trendy enough phrase to attract investors who do not bother with due diligence. After all, it is not the first time a company has tried to surf on a buzzword.
And some investors certainly seem to be falling for Dewan Farooque’s buzz. The company’s stock price was below Rs4 per share for most of 2022, but by August 2024 had scaled past Rs50 per share with absolutely no increase in revenue whatsoever. Far from it, the company is effectively nothing more than a shell, despite two years of rumours of a prospective revival.
So, where does this leave Dewan Farooque Motors and its EV ambitions? If history is any guide, the road ahead is likely to be as bumpy as ever, with plenty of speed bumps in the form of consumer scepticism, infrastructure limitations, and the company’s own rusty corporate machinery.
But perhaps Dewan Farooque does not care about these pesky details. After all, if they can pull off even a modest revival, they’ll have something they have not had in years: relevance. And in the world of corporate resurrection, that is worth its weight in batteries.
