Audi FAW new-energy vehicle (NEV) project broke ground on Tuesday in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province.

The joint venture project, with an investment of over 30 billion yuan (about 4.5 billion U.S. dollars), is designed to have an annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles.

The facility, Audi's first production base specifically for purely electric vehicles in China, is expected to be completed and go into operation at the end of 2024. It will firstly produce high-end models of the A6 e-tron and Q6 e-tron.

Audi holds a majority stake in the NEV joint venture with major Chinese automaker FAW.

The new project came as German luxury carmaker Audi AG seeks to cash in on China's fast-growing NEV market, analysts said. In the first five months of this year, more than 2 million NEVs were sold across the country, up 110 percent from a year earlier, grabbing a 21-percent share of the auto market, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

In 2021, Audi delivered 701,289 vehicles in the Chinese market, with sales of its purely electric e-tron models surging 68.7 percent year on year. By the end of 2022, Audi is expected to have nine electric models on sale in China.

Markus Duesmann, chairman of the Board of Management of Audi AG, said the ground-breaking of the new factory in Changchun marked another important milestone for Audi in China.