The first finished automobile made in the East China Base for FAW-Volkswagen. [Photo/Qingdao Today]

The first complete auto made in FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd, Qingdao Branch rolled off the production line recently.

After two years of construction, civil engineering for the first phase of the FAW-Volkswagen’s east China base, which is located in Longquan, a town in Jimo City, Qingdao, has been completed. Besides, equipment installation and debugging in four major workshops have also been completed in the main and trial production has begun.

Construction of the first phase of the base started in July 2017 with an investment of 10 billion yuan. Covering 1.11 million square meters, the first phase has a designed production capacity of 300,000 autos upon scheduled full operation in early 2018. It is said that manufacturing a car will take merely 60 seconds by that time.

So far, the Longquan, Jimo-centered Qingdao New Auto Industry City has introduced 119 key auto projects, which involve a total investment of 49 billion yuan and are expected to generate an output value of over 100 billion yuan.

Michael Noll is debugging the monitoring equipment of brake pedal. [Photo by Yu Ruixin/Qingdao Today]