AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)11/19 Report--

BYD is going to make a big move in overseas markets again. On Nov. 18, BYD is in talks with the Brazilian state government of Bahia to buy a plant that Ford stopped operating in January 2021, according to media reports such as Bloomberg and the Financial Associated Press.

In response to this news, a few days ago, Wang Chuanfu, chairman and president of BYD, revealed some details of BYD's plant in Brazil in a video congratulating BYD on the launch of its new car in Brazil. Wang Chuanfu said: "localized production in Brazil will be started in the future. We will continue to expand the strategic layout of the Americas and introduce more full-matrix products for the American market." Previously, BYD has said that it will start to import two models in Brazil from November. With the successful completion of this acquisition project, BYD may produce the corresponding models locally in Brazil. Other industry insiders quoted Li Ke, BYD's executive vice president, as saying that BYD would increase its investment in Brazil and that more information about the new plant would be announced in December.

The news of BYD's acquisition of the former Ford plant in Brazil is still waiting for more official information to be released. Adalberto Maluf, director of marketing and sustainability at BYD's Brazilian subsidiary, said the state government still faces problems and needs to develop a national electric vehicle travel plan and a minimum sales target to justify the decision to nationalize production. At an event held in Sao Paulo on November 16th, Maluf said that BYD had invested about 2.5 billion reais in the VLT project in Bahia state.

Although BYD began to expand the Brazilian market as early as 2014, it did not involve passenger car manufacturing projects. After setting up a branch in Brazil in 2014, BYD opened an electric bus chassis factory in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo in the following year; in April 2017, it opened a solar module factory, mainly supplying pure electric buses, trucks and other products; on September 1, 2022, BYD put into production at the lithium iron phosphate battery factory in Manaus, Brazil, responsible for the production of battery modules. According to the calculation, BYD has successively set up three factories in Brazil. if there is no accident, after this acquisition of the original Ford factory in Brazil, it will become the fourth factory of BYD in the Brazilian market, which is different from the first three factories. the fourth factory will mainly focus on the manufacture of passenger cars, which has been reported by foreign media. The Bahia project, with a total investment of $583 million (about 42.661 yuan), will start construction of three new plants in June next year, two of which are scheduled to be completed in September 2024 and put into operation in October. The other was completed in December 2024 and opened in January 2025.

At present, BYD has launched four models in the Brazilian market, namely, Han EV, Tang EV Jin, Song PLUS DM-i and Yuan plus, of which Song PLUS DM-i and Yuan plus are the latest models launched by BYD, both of which sell for 269990 Brazilian reais (about RMB 355000). With regard to the planning of the Brazilian market, BYD said it had opened nine stores in Brazil and expected to operate in 45 cities by the end of this year and 100 by the end of 2023. In addition to the Brazilian market, in fact, BYD has accelerated its expansion around the world since 2022.

On July 21, 2022, BYD entered the Japanese passenger car market and simultaneously unveiled three pure electric models, namely, PLUS, Dolphin and Seal; on August 1, BYD partnered with European dealer group Hedin Mobility to provide new energy vehicles for the Swedish and German markets; on September 8, BYD launched its first wholly-owned overseas passenger car factory in Thailand. On September 28th, BYD unveiled three new models of Han, Tang and Yuan PLUS on the European line of new energy passenger cars; on October 12th, BYD confirmed that it was considering building a second factory in the Indian market, and launched its first high-end pure electric ATTO 3 ("BYD yuan PLUS" in China) in the Indian market on the same day.

Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Federation of passengers, has said that new energy vehicles are the core growth point of China's automobile exports. Data show that the export volume of new energy vehicles from 2020 to 2021 is 223000 and 588000 respectively, showing a significant growth trend. According to the latest data from the China Automobile Association, domestic car exports from January to October 2022 were 2.456 million, an increase of 54.1 percent over the same period last year, and exports of new energy vehicles were 499000, an increase of 96.7 percent over the same period last year. Specifically, in the latest October, domestic car exports in October were 337000, up 12.3 percent from the previous month and 46 percent over the same period last year, while exports of new energy vehicles were 109000, up 1.2 percent from the previous month and 81.2 percent from the same period last year. Among them, BYD exported 9529 passenger cars, up 23.2% from the previous month, accounting for 8.74% of the total sales of new energy vehicles in October. According to industry forecasts, as BYD accelerates its overseas market, BYD's export sales are expected to reach 300000-500000 vehicles by 2023.

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