The Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD builds its first European car factory in Hungary. The company announced the investment in the southern city of Szeged on Friday. BYD said on its WeChat channel that thousands of jobs would be created there. The company currently operates a factory in Komarom in northwest Hungary that produces electric buses.
BYD left it open how big the car factory will be. The Chinese company currently already has facilities in the USA, Brazil, Japan and India.
“Build Your Dreams”, as the company is officially called, is now not only the largest electric car manufacturer in China,but even one of the largest in the world
. In 2005, Wang Chuanfu’s (57) car manufacturer built its first car and less than 20 years later it is the world market leader for electric cars. The car manufacturer is currently even letting it go build huge car freighters
in order to ship more goods to Europe in the future.
Bernstein’s experts assume that around 200,000 cars can be built in Hungary every year. For Tesla’s rival, a plant in Europe is important in order to be able to develop the market, the analysts wrote. “On-site construction reduces logistics and customs costs – which are particularly noticeable in the lower price segment,” it said. “It is even more important that the local governments also support the company.”
Currently also building BMW a factory in Debrecen, Hungary, where the cars of the New class should be produced. Several large battery factories are also being built in the Eastern European country.