CHICAGO, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. electric car company Tesla said it signed an agreement with China's Shanghai municipal government for its first overseas Gigafactory, local media reported on Wednesday.
On Chinese social media, the EV-maker confirmed the purchase of land, complete with pictures from the signing ceremony of the "land transfer agreement."
According to the agreement, Tesla purchased a tract of land measuring 864,885 square meters. Though Tesla didn't reveal the price, the website of Shanghai Land Market showed the original starting price of the land for sale was 973 million yuan (about 141 million U.S. dollars).
Securing the site is an important milestone for what will be the company's "next advanced, sustainably developed manufacturing site," said Robin Ren, Tesla's vice president of worldwide sales.
"Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy not only through all-electric vehicles, but also scalable clean energy generation and storage products," Ren said.
The U.S. carmaker said it was accelerating the construction of Tesla's Shanghai plant - Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory 3 - taking cues from the lessons learned in the United States.
Tesla signed an agreement with Shanghai municipal government in July to build a factory with a planned annual capacity of 500,000 electric cars. The company is the first to benefit from a new policy allowing foreign carmakers to set up wholly-owned subsidiaries in China.
