The Chinese automobile manufacturer BYD, the world’s leading manufacturer in the electric segment and which wants to expand into the European market, will build a passenger car manufacturing plant in Hungary, it announced on Friday. “BYD is preparing to build its first passenger car factory in Szeged, Hungary, marking a significant step towards green mobility in Europe,” BYD Europe said on its account on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
With the new automobile factory, the group “hopes to accelerate the entry of new energy passenger vehicles into the European market, further deepen its global presence, and actively promote the green transformation of global energy infrastructure,” it said. The factory will be built in stages and is expected to create thousands of jobs on site, BYD said. It “will be one of the most important investments in the history of the Hungarian economy,” welcomed Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in a press release, without giving a precise figure.
BYD is already present in Hungary, notably with an electric bus factory. The country is poised to become a major producer of batteries for electric vehicles – the second in Europe after Germany – with a huge factory also planned by a Chinese group, CATL.
BYD (“Build Your Dreams”) is one of the most prominent electric vehicle brands in China. The group, which counts Warren Buffett among its shareholders, this month became the first global manufacturer to cross the symbolic threshold of 5 million electric vehicles produced. Originally specializing in the design and manufacture of batteries, the firm diversified into automobiles from 2003. BYD stopped production of gasoline cars last year and now focuses exclusively on models hybrid and electric. Many foreign manufacturers (Tesla, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Toyota, Ford, etc.) now depend on BYD for their batteries.
But the growing success of Chinese electric vehicle companies in overseas markets is causing friction as the sector in China has benefited from decades of subsidies from Beijing in related technology areas. The European Union this year announced an investigation into these subsidies, citing unfair competition. In Hungary, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s long-standing policy of “looking east” has seen Asian companies benefit from tax breaks, infrastructure subsidies and job creation to attract them.
