Shanghai (ZXZC)- Evergrande Group celebrated on May 22 the first spade cut of its electric drive system production base at Nantaihu New Area in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, according to a local media report.

Covering an area of 450mu (300,000 square meters) and involving an investment of 15 billion yuan ($2.103 billion), the new base will contains the R&D hubs focusing on the “three-in-one” electric drive system, electric motor & autonomous driving technology as well as the integration of electric motor and batteries, and corresponding manufacturing workshops. It is expected to produce 500,000 units of electric drive system per year with an annual output value of 12 billion ($1.682 billion). 

(Photo source: Evergrande Group)

The Chinese real estate titan is renowned for its magnificent ambition to become the world's largest and most powerful NEV maker. Through a series of merger and acquisition moves, it has formed a wide-ranging industrial chain involving the manufacture of complete vehicles, electric motor & ECU, power battery, automobile sale and smart charging, etc.

Shi Shouming, chairman of Evergrande Health Industry Group Limited, revealed in late March that the company's NEV production bases in Guangzhou's Nansha and Shanghai's Songjiang are set to be completed in the second half of the year, and are expected for operation in 2021 with respective initial capacity of 200,000 vehicles per year.

He added then the EV production bases in Guangdong, Shanghai, Tianjin, Liaoning and other cities were all under orderly construction. The initial full-year capacity designed for them totals 1 million units.

In last November, the property giant announced the strategic partnership with a total of 60 world's leading auto parts suppliers at one go, including such well-known firms as Bosch, Magna, Continental AG, ZF Group, thyssenkrupp AG, JTEKT and BASF.

Xu Jiayin, chairman of Evergrande Group, said then Evergrande had prepared a great deal of budget for its NEV development cause--RMB20 billion for the year of 2019, RMB15 billion for 2020 and RMB10 billion for 2021.

The group launched its NEV brand “Hengchi” in last August. According to the Chinese billionaire, the first Hengchi-branded model, dubbed “Hengchi 1”, would make its debut in the first half of 2020. It will go into mass production in 2021.