(Source: CnEVPost)

Construction of Hefei's Xinqiao Smart Car Industrial Park will start on April 29, and Nio's new plant will be included, a new report suggested.

Chinese financial media outlet wallstreetcn.com reported Friday that Nio is likely to announce its plans to start capacity expansion at that time.

CnEVPost reported earlier this month that Nio, in conjunction with the city of Hefei, where its China headquarters is based, is in charge of the industrial park that will begin construction on April 29.

This is a world-class industrial park involving R&D, manufacturing, lifestyle services, and automotive culture.

The park is equivalent to an industrial cluster and will soon be home to some of the industry's leading industry chain companies, cls.cn said in a previous report citing Nio's source, adding that a new Nio factory will also be located here.

The above report by Wallstreetcn confirms the previous rumors.

It is worth noting that April 29 is also the date when Nio plans to announce its first-quarter earnings report.

On February 4 this year, the Hefei Municipal Government and Nio signed a framework agreement to deepen cooperation, agreeing to jointly plan and build the park and turn it into a world-class intelligent electric vehicle industry cluster with a complete industrial chain.

According to the agreement, Hefei will increase its support for the intelligent electric vehicle industry, introduce more high-quality enterprises in the industry chain to the park, and provide supporting policy support for enterprises in the park in terms of construction, funding and talents.

Nio will carry out long-term development planning and layout around Xinqiao Park, establish R&D and manufacturing, marketing and management teams in the park, and help Hefei introduce high-quality industry chain enterprises.

All Nio vehicles are produced at the Hefei manufacturing base, where the 100,000th mass-produced vehicle rolled off the production line on April 7.

The JAC Nio plant, which started production in the second half of 2017, covers an area of approximately 839.6 acres.

William Li, founder and chairman of Nio, said the current capacity of Nio's Hefei manufacturing base is 400 units per day, and based on 25 working days per month, the monthly capacity can reach 10,000 units.

However, there is pressure to achieve a monthly capacity of 7,500 units even now due to the supply chain such as chips and batteries, he said.

In January, CnEVPost reported that the construction of Nio's second plant has entered the construction bidding stage, a month after a tender notice for clearing the land for the plant was issued.

The Hefei Public Resources Exchange Center issued a tender announcement to recruit contractors for the construction of a new energy passenger vehicle body parts project for Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co.

The announcement did not specify that the project is Nio's second plant, but cls.cn quoted the project manager as saying, "This project is the second plant JAC is building for Nio, and the current production capacity is no longer enough."

The announcement showed that the estimated contract price of the project is about RMB 350 million ($54 million), with a planned construction period of 370 calendar days.