BYD to take on Tesla Giga Berlin with first major Chinese electric car factory in Europe
In a major development for the Chinese EV industry global expansion, Tesla's main competitor BYD announced that it will build its first electric car factory in Europe. Located near Szeged, Hungary, the factory is expected to provide "thousands of new jobs and the latest technology in the industry of the future," according to the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who bragged about the investment on social media.
It apparently took 224 rounds of negotiations between BYD and the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency to nab the city as its industrial base for European expansion. Hungary already hosts major EV battery facilities by Samsung, CATL, and others, so the country is evidently preparing to be a manufacturing hub for the electric vehicle revolution. BYD's NEV factory will be the biggest single foreign investment in Hungary's history, and will be built in several phases with all the latest automation technologies that the company can muster.
BYD taking on Tesla in Europe
With the first major Chinese EV factory in Europe, BYD will also be able to take advantage of the public fund subsidies for vehicle electrification that the EU is offering, and possibly avoid the pesky import duties that make its vehicles only slightly cheaper than the fare from local automakers.
BYD is expected to surpass Tesla in the number of electric cars sold this quarter for the first time, and already logged a higher gross margin than Elon Musk's company in Q3. According to the former VC of Berkshire Hathaway Munger, BYD's CEO is "a fanatic who knows how to actually make things with his hands."
"He's closer to ground zero in other words... the guy at BYD is better at actually making things than Elon is," he added at the time, referring to Tesla's CEO. In fact, with its first EV factory on European soil, BYD would become a direct competitor to whatever Tesla is churning out from its Berlin Gigafactory, including the cheap Model 2 mass market electric vehicle.
Source(s)
Xinhua via AboutHungary
