- The land is located in Jinshan district in southwestern Shanghai and covers about 1.13 million square meters.
- Lexus will become the second foreign automaker to have a wholly-owned auto plant in China.
Lexus, the premium brand of Japanese auto giant Toyota, has acquired a plot of land in Shanghai to prepare for the construction of its first wholly-owned electric vehicle (EV) plant in China.
Lexus paid RMB 1.353 billion yuan ($185 million) for an industrial land of about 1.13 million square meters in Jinshan district in southwestern Shanghai, according to an announcement by the Shanghai Public Resources Trading Center.
The land was sold on April 1 by the Shanghai Jinshan District Planning and Natural Resources Bureau, with a 50-year term of use, according to the announcement.
The land is allowed to be used for new energy vehicle (NEV) manufacturing, lithium-ion battery manufacturing, and other battery manufacturing.
Toyota announced on February 5 that it would build a wholly owned EV plant in Shanghai to produce Lexus models.
The first Lexus-branded battery electric vehicle (BEV) model was scheduled to go into production in 2027, according to the February statement.
The new company would have an initial capacity of about 100,000 units per year and will add about 1,000 new jobs in the early stages of production.
That means Lexus will become the second foreign auto brand after Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) to have a wholly-owned auto plant in China.
China relaxed restrictions in the pure electric vehicle sector in 2018, with foreign companies being allowed to operate as wholly-owned enterprises. Since 2022, China has further lifted foreign share ratio restrictions in passenger car manufacturing, allowing foreign-owned car companies to build wholly-owned factories.
Tesla's Shanghai factory -- located in the new Lingang district in eastern Shanghai -- started construction on January 7, 2019, and went into operation at the end of 2019, making it China's first wholly foreign-owned auto manufacturing project.
Toyota is the world's No. 1 automaker by sales, and China is its third-largest market after the US and Japan.
($1 = RMB 7.3112)
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