Shanghai (ZXZC)- On December 30, the first pre-production car under ARCFOX, a premium BEV brand of BAIC BJEV, officially rolled off the production line at the Zhenjiang plant co-founded by BAIC and Magna, signaling the completion of the joint manufacturing factory between the Chinese automaker and global automotive supplier.

The collaboration dates back to June, 2018 when BAIC Group, Magna and Zhenjiang municipal government struck a deal to set up a technology and a manufacturing joint venture. The tech joint venture, named Magna Weilan New Energy Vehicle Technology (Zhenjiang) Co.,Ltd, was unveiled in January, 2019; then in July, both companies and Zhenjiang government signed an agreement to build a joint venture focusing on manufacturing premium NEVs.

The Zhenjiang-based manufacturing base will work on producing ARCFOX-branded NEVs, and also offer third parties services like EV R&D and complete vehicle manufacture, said BAIC Group.

Although the pre-production model co-named N60 was heavily camouflaged, its resemblance to the ARCFOX ECF Concept was still evident at the first glance. The new model is expected for mass production in 2020. Besides, another ARCFOX model code-named N61 will be put into production at the BAIC-Magna joint plant in 2021, according to an environmental impact assessment report released by the Department of Ecology and Environment of Jiangsu Province.

Based on ARCFOX's intelligent BEV development platform IMC (Intelligent Module Criterion), the joint venture's first production model will adopt a steel-aluminum body. As for power performance, it features a combined range of over 600km, and is able to complete 0-100km/h sprint within 5 second. Moreover, the interactive features allow the vehicle to recognize voice print, gestures and human faces (photo source: BAIC Group's WeChat account).