Shanghai (ZXZC)- FAW Group and Siemens signed a strategic cooperation agreement on March 25 to build an advanced digital plant for Hongqi, a premium car brand owned by the China's state-owned automaker.

Under the agreement, both parties will carry out intimate collaboration in such areas as digital industrial technologies, smart building and intelligent energy. They will make joint efforts to promote digital construction of Hongqi brand's vehicle plant, striving to shorten R&D period and improve products' quality.

Both FAW Group and Siemens agreed that digitalization is a technical core that gives impetus on Chinese industry’s high-quality development. To achieve FAW Group's “2025” Strategy, both parties will boost Hongqi brand's digital transformation, trying their best to create a digital plant boasting high-efficient intelligence, superior quality, flexible customization, transparency, environmental friendly production as well as human-machine cooperative system, according to the speeches delivered by executives attending this signing ceremony.

Hongqi's new “H” assembly workshop has officially gone into operation at the end of February. As China's first assembly workshop equipped with automated distribution, the new workshop mainly produces such models as the Hongqi H7 and the HS7. The latter is an all-new mid/full-sized SUV that will hit the market in 2019. Reportedly, the HS7 will be powered by a 3.0-litre engine that pumps out 248kW.