Chongqing city district says it discussed projects with Tesla

BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. automaker Tesla Inc has met with officials from a district in the city of Chongqing in southwestern China to discuss “accelerating projects”, the Liangjiang New Area said on Tuesday.

Officials met Tesla Vice-president Tao Lin to discuss “accelerating projects”, Chongqing’s Liangjiang New Area said in a Wechat social media post.

It said government official Duan Chenggang welcomed Tao’s visit to “promote cooperation”, without providing further details.

The official China Securities Journal newspaper, citing unidentified sources, said cooperation could involve the establishment of sales and maintenance centres rather than factories.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company opened a plant in Shanghai last year, its first outside the United States, with the backing of the city’s government.

It is building Model 3 electric sedans there and has sold almost 30,000 units in the past three months.

Tesla is currently weighing up a decision to build a $1.1 billion assembly plant in the United States which could create 20,000 jobs and has stoked competition between sites on the short list.

With investors betting Tesla could show a quarterly profit in its July 22 report and potentially join the S&P 500 index <.SPX>, Tesla is now the world’s most valuable automaker, followed by Toyota <7203.T> and Volkswagen .

(Reporting by Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh; editing by Jason Neely)