Electric vehicle startup Faraday Future doesn’t have a production-ready car yet, but it has said it wants to get to that milestone within two years. The company just broke ground on a $1 billion (£0.7 billion), 3 million-square-foot factory in North Las Vegas in April, and now it wants another factory on Mare Island, a former naval shipyard located in Vallejo, a city north of San Francisco.

On Tuesday evening, the Vallejo City Council unanimously approved a six-month exclusive negotiating contract with FF LLC, a special-purpose subsidiary of Faraday Future, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Over the next six months, the company will solidify its proposal for the 157-acre site and present it to third-party lawyers and consultants representing the city. Faraday Future has agreed that it will pay the city’s legal and consulting fees as well as a $200,000 non-refundable negotiation fee, the Times says.

San Francisco Business Journal notes that allowing Faraday Future to re-purpose the currently dormant shipyard would be a huge boon for the North Bay city, which emerged from bankruptcy just five years ago. The Journal also reports that Faraday Future had looked at more than 200 sites before settling on Mare Island.

Faraday Future is widely seen as a potential Tesla competitor, although the Los Angeles-based company has had a slow start. The company has only so far revealed a concept car, the FF Zero-1, designed under BMW veteran Richard Kim. Meanwhile, Tesla has pushed out thousands of Model S and Model X electric vehicles and has recently announced its more budget-friendly electric car, the Model 3, which is slated to hit markets in late 2017. GM has also announced a 200-mile-range electric vehicle, the $30,000 Chevy Bolt, which the automaker has promised will be for sale as soon as early 2017. So Faraday Future has some catching up to do.

There have also been funding concerns—the startup has heavy ties to Chinese investment, and its parent company LeEco, formerly LeTV, is a Chinese Internet TV and smart-gadget company. When LeEco (also known as Leshi) halted share trading in China in December and then pushed the date that it would resume trading back to March, Nevada’s state treasurer personally traveled to China to confirm that Faraday Future’s parent indeed had the money to invest in such a large factory in Nevada. Nevada has promised to help finance the factory, which Faraday Future says will create 4,500 jobs, with $175 million in bonds.

In Vallejo, however, Faraday Future would have access to a large pool of engineering talent from the San Francisco Bay Area, and the city's Economic Development manager said last night that the startup's investment would make Mare Island "a destination and a factory." As soon as a deal is reached between Faraday Future and the city's negotiators, the plan will be taken back to Vallejo's city council for approval.

Update: Faraday Future responded to Ars' request for comment adding, "The goal [at the Mare Island site] is to have a second manufacturing facility, business offices, a customer experience center, and a vehicle delivery destination. This location will allow us to connect with customers on a premium and engaged level." The company's spokesperson also added that it can't comment on the number of jobs it would create or how much investment would be required in Vallejo just yet, but "the investment is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars."

"This includes investing significantly in the restoration and revitalization of the land surrounding the facility," the company's spokesperson added.