BYD aims to be among the top five best-selling brands in Europe by the end of the decade, and the construction of a factory in Hungary with an initial capacity of 200,000 units per year should help them achieve this. The plan is to produce cheap cars, but the latest information suggests that BYD has bigger plans.

In an interview with the German business magazine Capital, BYD’s European head, Stella Li, stated that the initial plan was to start with the cheap model Seagull, but it is estimated that larger and more expensive models will have better sales, such as the Dolphin and Atto 3.

In the next three years, production capacity is expected to increase, and Li also announced the arrival of a new model, the Atto 2. Some already assume that this is a rebranded Yuan Up model, which hit the market at the beginning of the year. The Seagull will be the fourth model in the fleet of cars to be produced in Hungary, and BYD plans to increase the fleet to 12 models.

The introduction of additional tariffs on electric cars imported from China has forced Chinese companies to shift production of some models to European soil. However, the decline in demand for electric cars in Europe is what is forcing all manufacturers to put more focus on hybrids. The reason for this is the high prices of electric cars caused by additional tariffs that came into force in the EU in November. The new tariffs will be in force for the next five years and apply in addition to the already existing 10 percent tariff on imports of cars from outside the European Union.

How important Europe is to Chinese manufacturers is shown by the data that 65,800 hybrid cars were exported to Europe from July to October. That’s three times more than the same period in 2023. Also, hybrids and plug-in hybrids accounted for 18 percent of Chinese cars sold in Europe, in the third quarter of this year. That’s more than double compared to the first three months of this year, when Chinese hybrid car sales in Europe accounted for just 9 percent of total sales.

Source: Capital