Chinese electric vehicle start-up Byton has confirmed it launched trial production of its first mass-production model at its Nanjing plant in Jiangsu province at the end of October.

The M-Byte electric vehicle has gone into trial production and is said to retain around 90% of the innovative design features that were including in the concept model showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and at the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany in September, including the 48-inch curved dashboard display.

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The car is set to compete head on with the Tesla Model 3, which is scheduled to go into commercial production at the company’s newly-built plant in Shanghai by the end of the year.

Byton, which has China’s internet giant Tencent as one of its key shareholders, said it will begin a series of verification and optimization processes for the M-Byte over the next few months ahead of commercial production.

The company said it has so far received more than 50,000 orders for the car, half of which China and half mainly from buyers in the USA and Europe. It aims to begin deliveries to Chinese customers by mid-2020 – with prices ranging between CNY300,000 and CNY400,000 (US$42,000 and US$56,000).

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The Nanjing plant will have an initial production capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year, easily expandable to 300,000 units as required. The company’s CEO Ding Qingfen said Byton aims to break even within three years from its first model delivery in mid-2020.

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See also: FRANKFURT – Byton reveals M-Byte SUV with 48-inch cockpit display