The Chinese are coming. Joining most of the American automakers, BAIC has opened an R&D facility in Silicon Valley. The BAIC EV R&D Center will be dedicated to the research and development of four to six models per year, and will become an important part of BJEV’s globalization plans, the company said.

The BAIC subsidiary Beijing Electric Vehicle (BJEV) has a 23% market share among China’s pure EV players, and ranks sixth globally in pure EV sales. The company plans to bring a complete lineup of EVs to market, with the goal of producing over 200,000 vehicles per year by 2020, 30% of them for the export market.

Earlier this year, BJEV become the largest shareholder in US EV-maker Atieva. The first vehicle to arise from this partnership is expected to debut at the 2016 Beijing auto show.

“Our strategy of conducting research into integrated vehicle technologies and platforms in an open manner has led to BJEV receiving resources and technical cooperation from eight universities and national institutes in research in development, as well as substantial support from partners from within the supply chain, such as Foxconn, Pangda and Tgood,” said BAIC General Manager Zheng Gang. “The establishment of BAIC EV R&D Silicon Valley will further our integration of technology resources from our other industry partners, such as AZARI and ATIEVA from the United States, CECOMP from Italy, Siemens from Germany, SK from Korea, and several others.”

Source: BAIC via Green Car Congress
Image: Abdullah AlBargan (CC BY-ND 2.0)