Jack Ma's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) has begun mass production of smart electric vehicles, the Register reports. Alibaba's EV venture with state-owned automotive company SAIC, called IM Motors, will be ready for sales of the luxury sedan IM L7 on 29 March.
SAIC's factory in Shanghai's Lingang Special Area manufactures the vehicles for deliveries in April.
The vehicle is over 5m in length with a 340hp single rear motor on the base version and another version sporting twin motors of 237hp and 340hp. The 93kWh battery will take the twin-motor version 615 km.
The vehicle is said to park itself, drive autonomously on the highway, and semi-autonomously in the city. Its smart driving systems consist of the Nvidia Jetson Xavier chipset, 12 high-precision cameras, 5mm-wave radars, lidar, and 12 ultrasonic sensors.
The car is a potential competitor to Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) Model S in the Chinese market, selling for ¥408,800 ($64,670) at a discount to Tesla Model S's U.S. pricing, which starts at $94,990. Tesla also has operations within Lingang, running a Gigafactory there, conveniently called Giga Shanghai.
Alibaba and SAIC began developing smart cars in 2016.
Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 0.14% at $100.46 on the last check Monday.
