Shanghai (ZXZC)-Several months earlier, in the presence of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, Volkswagen Group and Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co., Ltd. (JAC) signed a joint venture agreement in Berlin, Germany. Before the opening of the Auto Guangzhou 2017, the two parties officially nailed down the JV pure electric passenger vehicle project. At the meantime, Prof. Dr. Jochem Heizmann, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group China stated that the pure electric vehicle jointly developed by Volkswagen and JAC will be put into production in the first half of 2018, and will be launched in the second half of 2018.

Based on the JAC's manufacturing plant in Hefei Economic & Technological Development Zone, Anhui Province, the new project will construct new pressing workshop, welding assembling workshop, coating workshop and final assembling workshop, etc. Once completed, the new JV will have an annual production capacity of 100,000 pure electric vehicles.

In terms of their first jointly developed model, Prof. Dr. Jochem Heizmann once said that they will cooperate with JAC not only in a single project, but also in several model projects. Without doubt, SUV will be the first JV model that they will launch. Being built based on the JAC iEV6S and taking the advantage of Volkswagen's technologies and skills, the first jointly developed pure electric SUV reportedly will hit the market as early in next year.