BYD will make every car it sells in Europe, in Europe - by 2028. This comes straight from the company's EVP Stella Li, speaking at the Munich auto show.
This is obviously a response to the EU's recently imposed super-tariffs on Chinese-made EVs. BYD's factory in Hungary, which is in the EU, is expected to begin production by the end of this year.
Then, next year, BYD will start building a new production facility in Türkiye. "Within two to three years, we are training ourselves to be more European in production", Li said.
It will be interesting to see if this 'Europeanization' of BYD will extend to the cars' design and features - Hyundai and KIA did something like that a while back with pretty good results, but those were different times and we are talking about ICE cars.
BYD may also just continue with its current strategy, which is having a pool of models launching in China from which it selects which to take to Europe, sometimes with a name change but hardly anything more.
BYD plans to have more than 1,000 retail outlets across 32 European countries by the end of this year. The company has been on a hiring spree throughout the continent in recent months too. It is also in talks with "hundreds" of European suppliers for future cars, so it looks like it's not just planning to import every single part from China and merely assemble its EVs in Europe.
In a final bit of exciting news, BYD said it will bring its luxury brand Yangwang to Europe in 2027, to further broaden its portfolio. While BYD remains number one in sales in China, Li thinks its future growth will "increasingly come from overseas markets", hence why it's pushing so much for expansion in places like Europe.
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