(Yicai Global) Jan. 9 -- Byton, a smart electric carmaker under high-end auto firm China Harmony New Energy Auto Holding Ltd., debuted its first vehicle at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas at a price of USD45,000.

The model, dubbed the Concept, is a luxury mid-sized sports-utility vehicle with an array of human-car interactivity functions and an L3 autopilot system, which means it can drive autonomously but may need human intervention to respond to certain circumstances.

The Concept will enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2019 and feature an L4 autopilot system, which alleviates the need for human input under most conditions, by 2020, the company said at the show yesterday.

Electric vehicle startup Future Mobility Corp. Ltd. formed Byton with Harmony Auto as a founding investor. The company has bagged USD30 million in investment with other major shareholders including Chinese tech titan Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn Technology Group.

FMC was founded in 2016 and set up a manufacturing base in Nanjing, the capital of China's eastern Jiangsu province, in January 2017 to produce 300,000 vehicles a year. The firm is currently worth about USD750 million.