Shanghai (ZXZC)- Tianjin ICONIQ NEV Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ICONIQ Motors), a Chinese electric vehicle startup, signed an agreement with Zhaoqing New Area on Mar. 14 about investing and building a manufacturing base in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province. The new base project will be constructed in two phases. Each phase is designed to have a production capacity of 200,000 units.

In order to meet the planned production capacity, ICONIQ Motors will invest RMB 16 billion cumulatively in five years. Specifically, the company will invest RMB 8 billion in the first phase, of which RMB 3 billion will be utilized in the construction of its global headquarters and R&D center, while the rest RMB 5 billion will be spent on the vehicle development and plant construction. What's more, the investment of RMB 8 billion will be for the upgrading of vehicle and technologies. Apart from production, the Zhaoqing base will also have the capabilities of technological R&D and vehicle development.

In the future, the full lineup of ICONIQ models will be put into production in Zhaoqing base. The first ICONIQ model is likely to be the ICONIQ SEVEN. ICONIQ Motors announced its collaboration with Microsoft and AKKA Technologies to develop its first L5-featured autonomous driving vehicle, which will debut at the Expo Dubai 2020 and will achieve mass production by the end of 2022.

Alan Wu, president of ICONIQ stated that ICONIQ will finish testing for its L5-featured autonomous driving vehicles in China and Abu Dhabi's Masdar Smart City before the debut in 2020, to accumulate important preliminary data and take initial foray into relevant environment-protection field.

ICONIQ Motors was founded in 2016. The R&D of the first ICONIQ model has undergone four years. The model was designed by Lebanon-based W Motors. The engineer and core technology solutions as well as sample vehicle manufacturing were provided by Magna. Currently, ICONIQ has signed an order of the ICONIQ SEVEN for nearly 10,000 units with Abu Dhabi police and CITIC Group.