Shanghai (ZXZC)- Chinese EV startup Li Auto set up its Shanghai branch on April 20 after it announced in early February the plan of launching a R&D center in this megacity.

Li ONE; photo credit: Li Auto

According to the corporate data platform Tianyancha, the subsidiary involves a registered capital of 1 billion yuan ($153.853 million) and is wholly controlled by Leading Ideal HK Limited. Located in Anting town, Jiading district, it has a line of business covering the development of the technologies related to automobiles, cloud platform and big data, the planning, R&D and design of EV charging and battery swapping infrastructures, as well as the R&D of the facilities and auto parts in relation to battery swapping station, charging pile and energy storage system.

The startup claimed on Feb. 2 it would launch in Shanghai a R&D hub, which was dedicated to the development of cutting-edge electric vehicle technologies, including high-voltage platforms, ultra-fast charging technologies, autonomous driving technologies, next generation intelligent cockpits, operating systems and computing platforms. By that time, the R&D center had already started recruiting, and expected to ultimately house over 2,000 staff members in the future.

Li Xiang, founder and CEO of Li Auto, confirmed on April 19 the preparedness of the Shanghai-based R&D center via his personal Weibo account. He said the center can accommodate 2,000 employees in total and the staff can move into the building at the end of April.

Li Xiang recently noted Li Auto's in-house developed autonomous driving system would all be armed with the computing platform with 508 TOPS of computing power and LiDAR. He revealed the system can compete head-on with the counterparts from Huawei and Tesla next year.