Avoid trade tariffs
Chinese car manufacturers are under extra scrutiny here in the EU due to possible unfair competition with European car manufacturers. BYD seems to want to answer this with European production, which will take place in Hungary.
A few months ago, the European Commission sounded the alarm about the rise of Chinese cars on our continent. People are concerned about unfair competition, because the prices of Chinese cars are ‘being kept artificially low with Chinese subsidies’. This does not necessarily concern Chinese brands, but Chinese car production. That is why BMW, for example, is also under scrutiny, but also Tesla and Volvo. Not only that: in France, for example, there is now no longer an EV subsidy available for cars built in China. The Chinese BYD seems to want to escape such practices by building cars here in Europe.
Last spring we heard about possible European production plans from BYD. Then France, Germany and Spain would be in the running are for a European BYD factory. What now appears; it will not be one of those three countries. BYD announces the construction of a factory in Hungary. It will be located in Szeged, just above the border with Serbia and Romania. It’s not BYD’s first Hungarian factory; it already builds buses and trucks in the north of the country. It will be the first European passenger car factory of the world’s largest plug-in car manufacturer. BYD says it will build the factory in phases and create thousands of jobs.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl