Beijing, Oct 26 (IANS): Chinese tech giant Huawei has announced that it will start the production and delivery for a small batch of Arcfox Alpha S electric vehicles in the fourth quarter of this year.

The car is priced between 388,900 yuan and 429,900 yuan ($60,000 to $66,000) and runs HarmonyOS and related applications powered by a Huawei HiSilicon Kirin processor, reports GizmoChina.

Alpha S has been developed in partnership with a unit of state-controlled automaker BAIC Group and it is the result of over a billion dollars worth of investment for research.

The new EV will come with Huawei's aceHI" systems which means Huawei Inside and offers Level 4 capabilities, which means that the car is capable of "full autonomy".

Currently, more than 150 million devices are now on HarmonyOS, making it the fastest-growing OS in history.

Huawei CEO Richard Yu also revealed HarmonyOS 3 Developer Preview is being released, aiming to improve in three core directions -- system architecture, super terminals and multi-device usage within the same ecosystem.

Huawei officially released the HarmonyOS 2 operating system on June 2.

Recently, the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer and Apple's main iPhone supplier Foxconn unveiled three electric vehicle prototypes including two sedans and an electric bus under the Foxtron brand in collaboration with Taiwan's Yulon Motor.

In addition, another Chinese tech company Xiaomi will also start the mass production of its maiden electric car in the first half of 2024, CEO Lei Jun has announced. This means, the unveiling could happen sometime in 2023 or early-2024 and sales should start in H2 2024.