(Yicai) Sept. 4 -- Ecar Technology, a Chinese low-speed self-driving vehicle startup, has secured CNY200 million (USD28.1 million) from strategic investors.

The investors included private equity fund Guohe Capital, state-owned financial service provider China Capital Management, and a venture capital funded by Huishan district in Wuxi, China's eastern Jiangsu province, Ecar Tech announced today.

The proceeds will be used to build a smart factory and increase capacities to meet driverless vehicle demand, Shanghai-based Ecar Tech pointed out.

Ecar Tech's new smart plant will be built in the Huishan High-Tech Zone, said Zhang Xuejun, chairman of the district's funded VC. It will have an output of 5,000 Level-4 driverless vehicles and support maintenance services for 10,000 units once it goes live, Zhang noted.

Established in 2018, Ecar Tech focuses on making low-speed driverless cars for urban logistics and hygiene works and core driverless car parts, such as drive-by-wire chassis, with factories in Shanghai and Nanjing, the company said. It has delivered over 1,000 units with an accumulated travel distance of 10 million kilometers.

China has significantly pushed for trial applications of autonomous driving in recent years, boosting the industry's high-speed development. The national intelligent connected vehicles' testing areas include 32,000 km of open road with more than 120 million km covered in testing, according to data the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released on July 17. Over 7,700 testing plates have been issued.

Editor: Martin Kadiev