(Yicai) Oct. 17 -- Aito, a Chinese electric car brand co-built by Huawei Technologies and automaker Seres, will pay as much as CNY10,000 (USD1,370) to buyers whose delivery is delayed amid surging sales of its M7 sport utility vehicle.

Customers who ordered and put down the deposit for an M7 Plus or M7 Max before yesterday will receive a daily payment of CNY200 (USD27) up to a maximum of CNY10,000 if they do not get their M7 Plus within four weeks or their M7 Max within six weeks, under the compensation plan seen by Yicai today.

Buyers who make deposits from today through Nov. 30 will need to wait for eight and 10 weeks, respectively, before they become eligible for recompense as the result of a delayed handover.

More than 60,000 M7s were sold in the first month of its launch on Sept. 12, according to Aito’s won data. As the EV retails for CNY40,000 (USD5,479) less than previous Aito M models, its CNY249,800 (USD34,159) price tag has spurred strong sales.

Huawei is hiking its investment in Seres’ car plant in Chongqing by CNY1 billion (USD136.7 million) and adding 20,000 workers to ensure that production meets demand, Richard Yu, head of the tech giant’s intelligent automotive solutions business unit, said on Oct. 13.

The Seres factory making the M7 is operating 22 hours a day and around 600 vehicles should be produced each day this month, a company insider told Yicai.

The new models are expected to give Seres a boost, as the firm had poor sales this year due to the auto market price war at the start of 2023 and other factors, Citic Securities said in a recent report. Sales slid 31 percent to 137,000 units in the nine months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, while shipments of its new energy vehicles sank 25 percent to 68,223.

Editor: Kim Taylor