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FORTUNE.COM // SEPTEMBER 2019
In a drab industrial zone of western Shang-
hai, amid factories that each year crank out
hundreds of thousands of gasoline-powered
cars, transmissions, and engines, the world’s
largest automaker is racing to finish a new sort
of plant, one that will produce a car unlike any
it has made before. The 74-acre facility will
have a newfangled assembly-line conveyor
belt made of plastic instead of the typical steel
or wood—a system that should be cheaper to
reconfigure on the fly in order to manufacture
cars whose shapes and layouts are likely to
change more frequently and radically than
any model the company has previously built.
And the plant will be decked out with infrared
cameras to monitor the safety of stockpiles of a
component the company hasn’t before had to
deal with in large volume: enormous batter-
Electric
Gold Rush:
The Auto
Industry
Charges
Into China
Global carmakers like Volkswagen are betting
that electric vehicles are the future. But to
win in the world’s largest EV market, they will
have to battle a host of fierce new Chinese
competitors. Oh, and Tesla. By Jeffrey Ball
The assembly line in Hefei for Chinese startup Nio’s pricey ES8 full-
electric SUV, which, with all the options, retails for about $76,400.