The largest Chinese manufacturer of electric vehicles, BYD, is rapidly expanding its influence in the world: today it officially announced the start of construction of a plant for the production of passenger cars electric vehicles in the Hungarian city of Szeged, BYD wants to become the largest seller of electric vehicles in Europe by 2030.
Over the past two years, BYD has made a tremendous leap in business and is currently the leader in the Chinese car market. According to CAAM (China Association of Automobile Manufacturers), BYD sales in China from January to November this year amounted to 2,289,322 vehicles (+45.2% compared to last year), Volkswagen ranks second with 1,966,200 units. (-3.6%), third place is occupied by Toyota — 1,540,746 units. (-5.6%). BYD's qualitative gap from VW and Toyota is much greater, since since last year the Chinese company has been producing exclusively electric cars and plug-in hybrids, and VW and Toyota electric cars are selling poorly in China.
Outside of China, BYD is also developing rapidly : in 2017, a plant for the production of electric buses was launched in the city of Komarom in Hungary, this year the construction of factories for the production of passenger electric vehicles began in Thailand and Uzbekistan, a large production hub was announced in Brazil (passenger models, buses, truck chassis and components will be made here ).
Current BYD model range for Europe
In Europe, BYD currently sells only Chinese-assembled electric vehicles, and they have a special European specification, thanks to which they all received the highest 5-star Euro NCAP safety rating. Sales volume is still modest: in the first ten months of this year, according to JATO Dynamics, 11,076 cars were sold, of which 9,500 were the BYD Atto 3 compact crossover (in the title photo). For comparison, let's say that the MG brand, owned by the Chinese automaker SAIC, sold 56,669 units of MG4 electric hatchbacks alone during the same period, overtaking the Volkswagen ID.3 (54,487 units).
This year, SAIC and other Chinese companies (in particular Geely, Great Wall and Nio) announced their intention to build factories for the production of passenger electric vehicles in Europe, but BYD was the first to decide on a site: the plant will be located in the city of Szeged in southern Hungary and will provide this country has thousands of new jobs. The parameters of BYD's deal with the Hungarian government have not been disclosed, but, according to Bloomberg, the Hungarian authorities have promised significant financial support to the new enterprise.
For European automakers, the localization of Chinese electric vehicles in Europe could be a crushing blow: large automakers like Volkswagen today are not can work as quickly as Chinese companies, they are losing their position in the market right before our eyes and are preparing for difficult, if not the last, times.