Audi, a German luxury automobile manufacturer, announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China’s state-owned automobile company FAW to launch a joint venture to produce electric vehicles in China.

The company said that it would produce several all-electric models on the new Premium Platform Electric (PPE), co-developed with Porsche. The production is expected to begin in 2024, it added.

“This decision emphasizes the strategic importance of the Chinese market. We are thus actively pushing forward with innovations locally,” said Markus Duesmann, Chairman of the Management Board of Audi and responsible for the China-business.

The German automobile manufacturer unveiled its plans to generate about one-third of its sales from electrified cars in China by 2025. It sold 512,018 vehicles in China between January 2020 to September 2020, a 4.5% increase than its sales in the same period of the last year.

According to its statement, the company already started to produce its all-electric Q2L e-tron and the plug-in hybrid A6L TSFIe in partnership with FAW in China. Besides that, both companies are manufacturing Audi e-tron in the Changchun facility since the end of September. The company produces its vehicles in the FAW-VW joint venture at four different facilities in China, with a total manufacturing capacity of around 700,000 vehicles.

China has announced its ambition to transform into a carbon-neutral economy by 2060. However, for a country that contributes 28% of global emissions, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s claim lacked announcement of a definite roadmap and immediate concrete steps towards the goal, analysts opined.

Last month, Volkswagen, another Germany-based automobile manufacturer, announced its plans to invest €15 billion (~$ 17.53 billion) in China’s electric mobility segment by the end of 2024. The company said it would produce a portfolio of 15 new vehicle models in China by 2025, 35% of which would be fully-electric models.

Earlier China-based BYD Company Limited and Toyota Motor Corporation had announced that their new company’s operation would be launched in 2020. The name of the new company would be called the BYD Toyota EV Technology Company. It would be involved in the design and development of battery-run electric vehicles and their platforms and related parts.