OREANDA-NEWS Tesla company began the construction of its first in China electric vehicle Assembly plant on Monday.  The plant will be located in the industrial zone of Linggang near Shanghai.

The new plant will be the first for the company outside the United States, as well as the first enterprise in the automotive industry in China with one hundred percent foreign capital. The agreement on the construction of the plant was signed by Tesla in July 2018 with the administration of the Linggan district and the Linggan Corporation. By 2020, it is planned to launch the Assembly of the Tesla Model 3.

According to the document, the American company will independently invest in the construction of the enterprise with an annual production of up to 500 thousand cars. This project also involves investing not only in production, but also in the development and further promotion of products in the local market. What volumes of the investments in question originally did not specify, however local media reported that this project will become one of the largest in the history of Shanghai from the point of view of foreign investments in the manufacturing facilities.

In early August, Bloomberg, citing informed sources in the company, announced Tesla's readiness to invest $5 billion in the construction of the plant, as well as the possibility of raising funds in China for partial financing of the project.

An agreement with the Chinese side on the acquisition of the site for the plant was reached in October 2018. We are talking about a plot of land for commercial use with an area of 864.8 thousand sq.m. According to the signed agreement, Tesla received the right to use it for 50 years.

Shanghai was not accidentally chosen as the site for the construction of the Tesla plant, since this metropolis is the first in China to introduce electric vehicles - at the end of 2017, 165 thousand such cars were registered in the city.