Tesla And China Unicom In Deal To Build Charging Stations

Tesla Motors TSLA announced it is partnering with China Unicom CHU to build electric car charging outlets across China, the world's biggest auto market.

The two companies agreed to a deal to build charging posts at 400 China Unicom stores in 120 cities, in addition to adding super-charging outlets in 20 Chinese cities. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he is looking to invest heavily to build charging outlets in China to compete with rivals such as BMW.

SolarCity SCTY, which provides the panels for the charging stations and is another Elon Musk company, could benefit as well from the deal.

In pre-market trading, Tesla is up 1.9 percent, SolarCity is 0.80 percent and China Unicom is up 3.6 percent.