Chinese manufacturer BYD said on Wednesday that its future Hungarian factory should start assembling electric cars in three years.
A first for a Chinese manufacturer
The group’s leaders, including BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu, signed a “preliminary purchase and sale agreement” on Tuesday, January 30, to build a factory in Szeged, southeastern Hungary, the group said in a statement.
The Szeged plant will be the first passenger car manufacturing plant established in Europe by a Chinese automaker.
“The construction of the factory will be carried out in stages and the factory will be open and operational within three years, producing a full range of environmentally friendly BYD models,” highlighted BYD (acronym for “Build Your Dreams”, builds your dreams) .
The construction project and subsequent opening of the production facility is expected to create “thousands of jobs,” according to BYD.
BYD is already present in Hungary, in particular with an electric bus factory.
The country is on the verge of becoming a major producer of electric vehicle batteries, second in Europe after Germany, with a huge factory also planned by a Chinese group, CATL.
BYD in full international development
But the growing success of Chinese electric vehicle companies in foreign markets is causing friction, as the sector in China has benefited from decades of subsidies from Beijing in related technological areas.
The European Union announced in 2023 the opening of an investigation into these subsidies, alleging unfair competition.
In Hungary, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s long-standing policy of “looking east” has allowed Asian companies to benefit from tax breaks, infrastructure subsidies and job creation to attract them.
BYD, which was originally a battery manufacturer, became the world’s number one in electric cars ahead of the American Tesla in the fourth quarter of 2023, and has plans to build factories in other parts of the world, from South Asia to eastern Brazil.
Source: BFM TV
