China’s BYD Co. plans to choose a country to build a third European plant within seven to eight months, the company’s special adviser for Europe said Tuesday.
“We are not ruling out any options and are now considering any country,” Alfredo Altavilla said, speaking at an auto show in Milan.
“The site selection process for the third plant has already started and we expect to finalize it within seven to eight months,” he added.
BYD is set to start production at an assembly plant in Hungary in October, while the company’s plant in Turkey is due to start operations in March 2026. The combined production capacity of these two plants will be up to 500,000 cars per year.
Earlier, there were media reports that BYD was considering Germany for a new assembly facility, in part because the country spoke out against the imposition of duties on Chinese car imports last year.
Altavilla denied these speculations, calling them devoid of logic. At the same time, he emphasized that a decision has not yet been made.
He noted that the company is guided by several criteria, including the competitiveness of conditions for battery and car production. At the same time, Altavilla added that it is hard to imagine BYD building a plant in a country that treats Chinese cars poorly.
The President of Uzbekistan visited the BYD Uzbekistan Factory in the Jizzakh region and signed the first cars that rolled off the assembly line.
This is the first stage of a $160 million project. The plant currently produces two models of the brand’s cars. Theannual production capacity of the first stage is50 thousand units.
Thesecond stage of the $300 million project is expected to increase production to 200 thousand electric vehicles per year (in 2027-2028), 350 thousand in 2028-2029, and the third stage of the $500 million project will increase productionto500 thousand electric vehicles (starting in 2030).
For reference: In January-May 2024, Uzbekistan produced a total of 162,608 units of cars. Source – UzAUTO.
The joint venture has been provided with modern industrial infrastructure and nearly 2 km of railway tracks have been laid. The plant has modern equipment and robotic systems from China. The production process is automated. A laboratory for high-precision inspection of the geometric dimensions of electric vehicles has been set up.
As the number of electric vehicles increases, the level of localization is expected to gradually increase. First of all, the production of bumpers, glass, lacquered and plastic parts will be launched. In the future, it is planned to produce batteries, electric motors, aluminum parts, tires and seats.
In the future, the plant plans to export electric vehicles to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan.
BYD, CARS, PLANT, UZBEKISTAN
