The question posed to Wen Han, founder of the electric truck maker Windrose Technology, was a simple one: Is it accurate to call the firm a Chinese company?
After some rambling, Mr. Han settled on an answer: “I would describe it as Chinese origin.”
There’s a reason it felt like a trick question: Windrose’s investors include an Australian property group, U.S. venture capital financiers and Chinese state-owned funds. It is now based in Belgium. But at its heart, Windrose packs China’s significant advantages in making electric vehicles.
Mr. Han wants to use that edge to sell long-haul trucks globally. He is intent on taking his company public in New York, saying he plans to file the initial paperwork within the next month to raise up to at least $400 million.
While the business proposition is simple, the execution is anything but — complicated by geopolitics, trade tensions and a surge of protectionism. Mr. Han is mindful of what he calls Windrose’s “Chineseness.”
Born in China’s coal country, Mr. Han, 34, grew up when Chinese globalization did not trigger the kind of political distrust in the United States that it does now. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts and worked at the American hedge fund Bridgewater Associates. His life has spanned both countries. Now, he is pushing for Windrose to do the same in a fracturing world.
“China will never be America’s best friend, not in our lifetimes,” he said. “However, China doesn’t have to be the enemy forever, and not everyone from China has to be the enemy.”
Windrose is looking to upend the trucking industry’s century-old reliance on diesel. It relies on China’s advanced electric vehicle supply chain of batteries and components, a byproduct of Beijing’s sizable government-led investments.
In addition to an office in Antwerp, Windrose is building a production plant in northern France. It has sites in Georgia and California to handle light assembly of trucks mostly manufactured in China. It is now choosing among Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio for a factory to open in 2027.
It is forging ahead more on ambition than a proven track record. It has produced only about 40 trucks, a long way from its target of building 10,000 in 2027. It faces regulatory hurdles. Customers in America and Europe cannot yet buy its vehicles, which are waiting to get road-certified.
In three years, Windrose has raised more than $300 million. While other fledgling truck makers have struggled to get production lines up and running, Windrose has surprised many in the industry with its speed in designing, developing and producing trucks. Mr. Han’s vehicles have been tested on long routes in the United States, Europe, China and Australia.
“I’m always telling him that he’s being too aggressive, but he keeps delivering, so now I have nothing to say,” Allen Zhu, managing director at GSR Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm and a Windrose investor.
But, of course, Windrose is facing conditions that are unfriendly, if not outright hostile, to Chinese start-ups.
President Trump has imposed escalating tariffs on Chinese imports. In February, he ordered restrictions on Chinese investments in strategic sectors and sought to limit how Chinese firms list their shares on U.S. stock exchanges. As part of the decree, the White House specifically identified China as a “foreign adversary.”
And then there is Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, who has Mr. Trump’s ear. Tesla is one of Windrose’s main competitors with the capital, know-how and brand to challenge existing truck manufacturers.
Whether or not Mr. Han succeeds in his American endeavor, his story speaks to the inexorable economic impulses that connect China and the United States despite the political forces dividing the countries.
Mr. Han, the only child of two doctors, competed in national English-speaking competitions as a student. He noticed that many top participants had lived abroad.
“So I told my mother,” he said, that “I, too, would like to gain such an unfair advantage.”
At 16, he left China to attend high school near San Diego. After college, he worked at Bridgewater. He worked in venture capital after Stanford Business School. Mr. Han joined Plus, a Silicon Valley start-up for self-driving trucks with operations in China and the United States, and eventually became its chief strategy and financial officer.
He discovered the perils of becoming trapped between Washington and Beijing. Mr. Han said he had been headed toward a $20 million payday from Plus’s initial public offering until China’s crackdown on the ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing put a freeze on his company’s listing plans. Plus eventually split its Chinese operation from the rest of its global portfolio.
“I learned how to deal with geopolitical sensitivities,” Mr. Han said.
He started Windrose in 2022. At the time, investors were wary of electric vehicle companies after some high-profile failures. Battery prices had soared from lithium carbonate shortages, heaping additional pressure on profitability.
Mr. Han took a contrarian view. The stigma around the sector meant there were fewer new competitors. He thought lithium prices had peaked. He was right about both, but more than that, he knew that China’s supply chain for electric vehicles was far ahead of the rest of the world.
Windrose did not invent something new. Tesla and Nikola had announced plans for electric trucks years earlier, but both companies were setting up supply chains in the United States, not China. Nikola declared bankruptcy in February. Tesla is running years behind production targets for its truck, the Semi.
Mr. Han faced some resistance when raising money in the United States. Anything Chinese is considered “taboo,” he said. Someone suggested that he say he was Chinese American, not Chinese.
It has even followed him to Europe. After Windrose switched its incorporation from the Cayman Islands to Belgium, it paid to change the local professional basketball team’s name to the Windrose Giants Antwerp. A local newspaper ran a headline: “Should We Be Wary of Chinese Espionage?”
“I never shy away from the Chineseness,” said Mr. Han, a part owner of the team. “I also never shy away from the problems that arise from the Chineseness.”
He said he wanted Windrose to be considered a global company, not a Chinese state champion. He tries to keep his distance from the Communist Party.
When asked about a news video of Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, inspecting one of Windrose’s trucks last year, Mr. Han emphasized that he was not a party pawn.
“I don’t go around and criticize President Xi,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’m the proud son of President Xi. We don’t want to become China’s next state-owned pride.”
Mr. Han said he had rebuffed suggestions from officials to team up with certain Chinese companies or pursue different technologies.
“I tell them, ‘Let me do my job,’” he said. “They tell me, ‘You need to start being more respectful.’”
His wife, Jessie Jia, a fitness influencer with 2.9 million followers on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, said she worried that Mr. Han would say something that might land him in hot water.
“I was concerned about it, but I can’t control him,” Ms. Jia said.
Windrose has taken money from two Chinese state-backed investment funds and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. If it hadn’t taken the investment, another competitor would have, Mr. Han said. None of the state-backed entities have board seats or influence with the company, he said.
The markets are never far from Mr. Han’s mind. In December, at a meeting with Benoît van den Hove, chief executive of Euronext Brussels stock exchange, Mr. Han was already planning on a secondary listing in Europe after going public in America. He wanted Windrose to be a part of the Bel 20, Belgium’s benchmark stock index of the country’s 20 most valuable companies.
Mr. van den Hove explained that if the trucks were not road-certified before the listing, the front of Windrose’s investment prospectus would come with a warning label about the potential risk.
Mr. Han was unfazed. He said that its trucks were already certified in China, and that he expected Windrose to be approved in the United States in April and in Europe later this year.
China is adopting electric trucks more quickly because the vehicles are cheaper and the charging infrastructure is better. Windrose is selling its electric trucks for $250,000, which is cheaper than E.V. options from traditional brands but still a significant premium compared with diesel.
Windrose is eager to get trucks to customers before Tesla, which first demonstrated its prototype Semi in 2017. Tesla said last year that it aimed to reach mass production — an annual capacity of 50,000 trucks — at its facility in Nevada by the end of 2026. Tesla, which did not respond to a request for comment, initially said it would begin deliveries in 2019.
Mr. Han speaks of Mr. Musk with reverence. He said that Mr. Musk had done more for relations with China than most diplomats and that Windrose had benefited from the Chinese supply chain that rose up to support Tesla.
He said, however, that building electric trucks was not a priority for Mr. Musk. He started naming his various roles.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “And being best friends with Donald Trump.”
Mr. Han is no less desperate for the president’s attention. He has already decided to build a factory in a “very red” state, but he sent a direct plea to Mr. Trump last month on Truth Social.
“Mr. President,” Mr. Han wrote. “We heard you and we would like to announce our plans to build Windrose EV truck’s first manufacturing facility in the United States! Please help find us the right community to invest in!”
Mr. Han has not heard back.
