BYD, China’s largest automaker, will locally produce electric vehicles for sale in Europe within three years, helping it avoid EU tariffs, while plug-in hybrids are expected to dominate its European sales in the short term, an executive said on Monday.
“We are training ourselves to be more European in production,” Stella Li, executive vice president and number two at BYD, told Reuters at the IAA Mobility auto show in Munich.
BYD is building a factory in Hungary that should start production this year, and plans to start production in Turkey in 2026.
The EU imposed tariffs on electric vehicles manufactured in China last year on the grounds that Chinese manufacturers were benefiting from public subsidies.
When asked how long it would take BYD to produce all the electric vehicles it needs to meet European demand, Li replied: “Give us about two or three years.”
Initially, BYD only sold fully electric cars in Europe, but at the end of last year, it announced that it would also start selling plug-in hybrids. These have proven popular with consumers, and in the United Kingdom, for example, the manufacturer’s best-selling model is a plug-in hybrid (PHEV).
Li said that BYD will launch another three or four PHEVs in the next six months and expects them to soon outsell fully electric models in Europe.
Li stated that BYD will launch its luxury brand Yangwang in Europe in 2027.
BYD’s global sales skyrocketed to 4.2 million cars in 2024, 10 times more than in 2019. But it has seen several months of falling sales and production declines in its home country, China.
This was normal after a prolonged period of growth, Li said.
“BYD remains number one in China, we are happy with the results,” he said. “Perhaps in the last year or two our share was too high as number one, so now we are back to normal.”
Source: Yahoo!Finanzas
