Dreametech's car dream is gathering dust in a basement

Dreametech’s big leap into the automotive world is looking less like a high-speed chase and more like a slow crawl into a dead end. Just one year ago, the company was making headlines with flashy concept cars and wild claims about 0-100 km/h acceleration times under 1.8 seconds. Fast forward to now, and those "revolutionary" vehicles aren't tearing up the track—they're sitting under dusty covers in a Suzhou basement, serving as expensive, non-functional models.

It’s a classic case of "move fast and break things," except in this case, they mostly just broke the bank.

The disappearing act of a thousand-person team

The most glaring red flag isn't just the dusty cars, but the massive brain drain happening behind the scenes. If you look at the "Starry Sky Project" office space on the 9th floor, more than two-thirds of the desks are sitting empty. We're talking about a team that supposedly swelled to nearly a thousand people earlier this year, only to shrink to about a hundred.

Headhunters are already seeing a flood of director-level candidates—from R&D and supply chain to finance and government relations—all looking for work after fleeing the Dreametech car project. It turns out that hiring the best talent in the industry is easy; actually having a product for them to build is the hard part.

Why the "Huawei model" failed to launch

Dreametech tried to play it smart by adopting a model similar to Huawei's—focusing on core tech while outsourcing the actual manufacturing to established players. But there’s a massive catch: they haven't actually found a partner.

• The Partnership Myth: There were rumors of a deal with Chery, but Chery shut that down faster than a Tesla door closes, explicitly denying any strategic cooperation.
• The Ghost Factory: Plans for a 400,000 square meter production base in Shanghai's Lingang Special Area turned out to be nothing more than a patch of wasteland. The land is still "in the planning stage," which is corporate speak for "nothing is happening here."
• The Branding Chaos: They split their automotive efforts into three different business units—Starry Sky, Starry Future, and Interstellar Travel—each chasing different segments from supercars to luxury SUVs. It's a logistical nightmare that makes coordination nearly impossible.

From hyper-expansion to total contraction

This isn't just an automotive problem; it's a company-wide identity crisis. Dreametech went on a massive spree of "incubating" over 200 business units, ranging from chips and energy storage to smart rings and even low-altitude economy projects. They were basically trying to own every gadget known to man.

Now, the bubble is bursting. The company is aggressively scaling back, folding most of these experimental units into a centralized "Industrial Research Institute." Even their core business—the home appliances that actually make them money—is feeling the squeeze. Suppliers are reporting delayed payments, and massive groups of creditors are popping up on social media to demand their dues.

While Dreametech still holds a dominant position in the robot vacuum market, you can't fund a fleet of supercars and a semiconductor empire solely on the profits from floor cleaners. The "industrial crown" they were chasing is starting to look a lot like a heavy weight dragging them under.