Shanghai (ZXZC)- BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd is about to ramp up production capacity by 240,000 vehicles per year for its Dadong plant located in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, according to a Chinese media outlet.

Involving an investment of RMB9.308 billion, the newly-added capacity will be used to produce the long-wheelbase BMW 5 Series sedan and an upper medium SUV model. The joint venture previously announced that a upper medium SUV will be made in the same workshop as the BMW 5 Series and the BMW X5 will be locally-produced in China, thus we have the reason to speculate that the upper medium SUV model is the China-made BMW X5.

According to current planning, the annual capacity of the BMW X5 will exceed 110,000 units in 2025 and the fifth-generation X5 will be put into production in 2027.

The China-made X5 will be substantially cheaper than that of the existing model since its price will no longer contain such costs as import tariff and other relevant taxes. The BMW's yet-to-be-locally-produced model will be launched to compete with such models as the Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class and the Audi Q7.

The China-made X5 that will be produced first is predicted to be a mid-cycle refresh model since the fourth-generation X5 just hit the market at the end of 2018. Powering the domestically-produced model may be a 2.0-litre inline-4 turbocharged engine or a 3.0-litre inline-6 turbocharged engine, mated to an 8-speed automatic manual transmission offered by ZF Group.