Faraday, an affiliate of Beijing-based Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp, has also pared its planned product portfolio down from seven to two vehicles, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the company's plans.

Faraday will build a much smaller auto assembly facility than originally planned in North Las Vegas, Nevada, a city official said late on Tuesday.

North Las Vegas city manager Qiong Liu said Faraday told the city it will build a 650,000-square-foot (60,390-square-meter) facility, beginning later this year, on the site of a plant originally planned to take up 3 million square feet.

The downsizing follows an acknowledgment last fall by the company's founder, Chinese tech entrepreneur Jia Yueting, that his global operations were overextended. Former Faraday executives have said the company struggled with cash flow issues almost from its inception.

At least a dozen key U.S. executives have departed Faraday in the last nine months, according to the company and several of those executives.

In a statement, Faraday said it still plans to eventually construct the larger plant, but gave no timetable.

Faraday is still hiring contractors to begin building the factory shell, according to a source familiar with the plans, but there is no firm date for completion.

"We remain committed to the State of Nevada and are continuing our $1 billion investment in the region over the next few years," Faraday said in the statement.

Faraday announced plans in December 2015 to build its first auto factory in Nevada, with an annual capacity of 150,000 and a planned opening in late 2017. Documents submitted to the state showed a planned investment of $1.3 billion.

Inditex, which owns both Zara and Pull&Bear, was warned by Russian consumer watchdog Roskachestvo in June 2016 that the shirts posed a “threat” to consumers, the RBC news site reported.

"The fabric [which the shirts were made of] hardly let any air through at all,” Roskachestvo experts ruled. “Three shirts did not meet Customs Union requirements as to the breathability of the material, making them unsafe.”

The stores withdrew the shirts from sale after a meeting with Russia's Industry and Trade Ministry on Wednesday, “until the situation has been fully clarified.”

Inditex operated 485 stores in Russia as of January 2016. Worldwide, their brands also include Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho and Zara Home.

The model being exported is the Lada 4x4 SUV, assembled in Kazakhstan by AvtoVAZ’s partner Asia Auto.

“[Chinese] exports began in January 2017. At this stage, we are talking only about the Lada 4x4 SUV. Even though custom clearance cost more than half of the car’s price, the car remains competitive,” a source at Asia Auto told Life.ru.

Chinese distributors are interested in the car, and the plant intends to sell more vehicles in the local market, the source said. Automakers need a Chinese distributor or pay tariffs of up to 83 percent.

“The tariff in the UAE is rather low; the market is open, and the price is cheap there. The prospects are enticing. A small but steady export of Ladas to the United Arab Emirates is underway,” the source added.

In Russia, Lada 4x4 costs around $8,550.

The plant in Kazakhstan will soon see a new assembly line, which will make 120,000 vehicles a year. Besides the Lada 4x4, the plant assembles the Lada Granta and Lada Kalina models with plans to build the new Lada Vesta and Lada Xray models.

Experts doubt the producer’s exports to China will be huge, but AvtoVAZ still may get a niche on the market, they added.

“It is unlikely that there will be significant sales volumes. We are talking about thousands of cars, but not tens of thousands. But as part of the marketing policy of diversification, why not? Basically, China is a big country, and a niche can be found there. From the point of view of the Chinese government, AvtoVAZ is unlikely to meet any opposition, as it’s a low-cost brand with a small volume of exports,” said VTB Capital car market analyst Vladimir Bespalov.

In 2016, AvtoVAZ exported 20,000 cars and intends to increase that by 50 percent in 2017. It has a stable market share in CIS countries and also delivers cars to Germany, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Hungary. AvtoVAZ intends to expand to the Czech Republic, Mongolia, and South-East Asia.