BYD pre-purchases ink in Hungary to manufacture EVs for Europe

Two months after announcing that it had selected Hungary as the preferred location for Europe’s first passenger car EV production facility, Build Your Dreams (BYD) has announced that it has secured a reserve of land in Hungary where these facilities will eventually be built. Completed sales contract. At the moment, it’s no surprise that BYD aims to quickly start producing EVs in Europe, and is now one step closer.

BYD enters 2024 as the world leader in EV sales, recently overtaking Tesla, and shows no signs of slowing down. Chinese automakers are now in their fourth year in the European market and continue to introduce new EV models to compete with the US EV leader among traditional automakers in the EU. Still, there appears to be a good relationship between two of the most prominent EV automakers in the space today.

BYD will begin searching for a candidate for production in Europe in 2022, and announced formal plans to establish a base in November 2023. A month later, we learned that the first European-built BYD EV will be produced from Hungary.

BYD plans to produce EVs in Hungary within three years

Per BYD Weibo page, officially signed a preliminary sales contract for land in Hungary with the Szeged city government on January 30, 2024. The ceremony was attended by BYD Chairman and President Wang Chuanfu and Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó.

As reported in December, BYD facilities in Hungary are operated with subsidies from local governments. However, the scope of these investments still needs to be learned, and we will probably learn more only after the European Commission formally approves the deal.

If approved, BYD’s first passenger EV production site could become an important hub to crack the European EV market. Once completed, the plant is expected to be able to produce up to 200,000 EVs per year through a phased expansion program.

In today’s update, BYD expects the Hungarian facility to be operational within three years, joining existing facilities in the country that manufacture electric BYD buses.