Aston Martin to Build Electric Cars With China's LeEco

FRANKFURT—Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd. is creating a joint venture with Chinese partner LeEco to help bring its first electric car to market in 2018, a move that creates an informal affiliation with Los Angeles-based electric car startup, Faraday Future Inc.

LeEco, formerly called Letv, is a primary backer of Faraday, a company with about 500 employees planning to build a factory in the U.S. and sell electric cars in 2017. While Aston Martin, a storied British brand, shares the same backer, it emphasized that is not currently working with Faraday. However, it said in a statement that all three companies may work together in the future.

Speaking about the partnership with LeEco at a join news conference in Frankfurt, Germany, Aston Martin Chief Executive Andy Palmer said: "We're on the way to creating a joint venture…it will help [bring] a product for Aston Martin EV quicker to market than we anticipated."

Aston Martin, the sports-car brand closely linked with the fictional British superspy James Bond, unveiled an electric prototype version of its Rapide S car in October 2015, the RapidE. The company plans to build the car at its Gaydon factory in the U.K.

LeEco is a China-based consumer electronics firm that offers a variety of services, including smartphones and a video service similar to Netflix. Aston Martin already collaborates with LeEco on in-car entertainment systems for the Rapide S, and the two companies are jointly developing zero-emission technologies.

Yueting Jia, the founder of LeEco, a billionaire entrepreneur often likened to Elon Musk, has made investments in a number of electric-car ventures. In addition to Faraday, which intends to produce and sell an electric car as soon as 2017, LeEco has invested in Silicon Valley-based Atieva Inc., which is designing an electric car.

Faraday recently started work on a plant in North Las Vegas where it intends to make its first vehicle. The company has added hundreds of workers in a short period of time, recruiting engineers from Ford Motor Co., Tesla Motors Inc. and many others.

Mr. Palmer, who joined Aston in late 2014, was a key advocate at Nissan Motors Inc. for the electric-vehicle program there. Nissan, with its Leaf electric car, is a world leader in electric vehicles.

A spokesman for Aston Martin said that the RapidE's performance figures should be at least as good those of the four-door Rapide S, which can accelerate from 0-60 miles an hour in 4.3 seconds, and has a top speed of 203 mph.

The British sports car maker has more than 100 years of history producing luxury vehicles, but has struggled with development costs since being sold by Ford to private investors in 2007.

Write to Mike Ramsey at michael.ramsey@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 17, 2016 12:55 ET (17:55 GMT)

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