VW will face the Tesla X in China from 2021 with an electric SUV By Reuters

By Edward Taylor

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Volkswagen (DE) plans to build an all-electric sports utility vehicle (SUV) for China from 2021, attacking the X model of Chinese market leader Tesla, the German automaker the production of zero-emission vehicles.

The planned new SUV is the latest initiative in Volkswagen's aggressive growth strategy in China, where authorities are giving preferential treatment to electric cars.

VW has announced that its ROOMZZ ID, presented Sunday in Shanghai, will have three rows of seats and a range of up to 450 km. The concept car is capable of "level 4 autonomous driving," VW said.

Herbert Diess, managing director of VW, said the ROOMZ ID would be the flagship electric car that Volkswagen will launch in China.

"We plan to produce more than 22 million electric cars in the next 10 years," Diess said, adding that nearly half of VW's engineers were working on products destined for China.

Diess said the ROOMZ ID would eventually be rolled out to other markets.

To strengthen the research and development capabilities of the VW Group, Volkswagen and its high-end Audi brand will combine their research and development activities in China.

The VW brand electric mobility manager, Thomas Ulbrich, said the automaker would start increasing production of 33 electric cars by mid-2023, using the modular electric car platform ( MEB) of the VW group to build electric cars of the Skoda, Seat, Audi and VW brands.

Ulbrich said the VW group is converting 16 factories around the world to allow mbad production of electric vehicles, eight of which will produce VW cars.