HEFEI, China (AP) — Volkswagen is making a major bet in China, the largest and one of the most cutthroat auto markets in the world. The question is whether it will work.

The German carmaker, which once dominated the market with a more than 50% share, has invested 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in a sprawling research and development center — its largest outside its home country — in Hefei, a low-key central China city of 10 million people.

It’s a sea change from how foreign automakers operated in China for decades by making cars they developed overseas, sharing their technology with local partners. That strategy has been shoved aside by fast-rising local competitors who have sharply cut into the sales of foreign brands.

“This business model is now gone,” Thomas Ulbrich, the chief technology officer of the Volkswagen Group in China said.