Qijing, an automobile company co-founded between GAC and Huawei in China in September, has wrapped up the development of its first production car. Qijing CEO Liu Jiaming, formerly an executive at the GAC Group, has posted the first teaser image of it.
The car is depicted under drapes, but you can still discern smooth front outlines, an elongated hood, the side mirrors and a LiDAR on the roof. A while ago, AutoHome.cn posted a leaked photo of a similar-looking car running tests in a desert environment in China. Assuming it’s the same car, it looks like a full-size sedan.
For the time being, Qijing’s firstborn is known under its factory designation “F03”. The final name is pending. Rumors claim it will debut in two main versions – all-electric and plug-in hybrid, both priced above 300,000 CNY. The Qijing vehicle lineup is envisioned as premium and largely consisting of sedans and crossovers.
For the exports, the company said it was planning to use the brand “Venue”, or possibly “Venice” – we’ll have to wait to learn the official transliteration from Chinese, as there has still been no formal announcement.
Rumors also claim that the Qijing brand won’t become a part of the HIMA alliance. Normally, all domestic automobile brands created with the participation of Huawei are considered parts of the larger HIMA Group, but Qijing might get bigger autonomy, according to these reports. The description accompanying the photo claims that Eric Xu, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Huawei, personally supervised the design of the sedan.
Last fall, GAC and Huawei presented a plug-in hybrid show concept named simply the Concept 1 (in the video above). It’s unclear how similar the F03 will be to that concept – if at all. We should be able to learn more in several days, though, so stay tuned.
