Hefei JAC-NIO Manufacturing Plant Completes Staged Production Line Transformation

Chinese auto manufacturer JAC announced Friday that it has completed the phased production line transformation of its manufacturing facility in Hefei, making further preparations for the production of new models including the NIO ET7.

NIO, a pioneer in China’s premium smart electric vehicle market, revealed that the current annual production capacity of the factory is 120,000 units per year, which will reach 240,000 vehicles and components per year upon completion of the overall upgrade. According to the plan, the overall upgrade of the production line will be completed in the first half of 2022 to meet growing market demand.

At the beginning of 2021, the JAC-NIO Advanced Manufacturing Center started the overall transformation of its production line. In order to minimize the impact on production, JAC and NIO have completed the key transformation to the workshops of car body, painting and assembly during the country’s National Day holiday, working on the project since September 28.

Among them, 101 robots were added to the body workshop and 408 robots were adjusted in software programs and production step balance, while the vehicle body production lines with high-strength steel aluminum hybrid process were installed. At the same time, two new production lines were built in the final assembly workshops, and online tooling equipment were upgraded too. In addition, the new painting workshop under construction is progressing as planned.

According to the plan, this overall transformation of the production line will be fully completed in the first half of 2022.

According to Chinese media outlet Autohome, in May 2016, JAC Moctors formally signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with NIO Inc. At the beginning of the cooperation, the two sides built a world-class intelligent manufacturing factory – the JAC-NIO Advanced Manufacturing Center – which has the first high-end all-aluminum body production line of domestic independent brands.

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In 2019, two high-performance electric SUVs, the ES8 and ES6, were successively produced by NIO. In 2020, the EC6 mass production project was kicked off, and in April 2020, NIO China’s Headquarters settled in Hefei. In August 2020, the ET7 was confirmed to be imported into the JAC-NIO Advanced Manufacturing Center for production.

Up to now, nearly 100,000 units of the relevant models have been produced by the two companies.