China’s BYD to set up EV plant in Thailand – EQ Mag Pro
BYD announced in a joint statement with Thai industrial developer WHA Group that a purchase agreement had been signed for 96 hectares (237 acres) of land in the eastern province of Rayong for the plant.
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD on Thursday announced it would set up a facility in Thailand to start producing 150,000 passenger cars a year from 2024.
BYD announced in a joint statement with Thai industrial developer WHA Group that a purchase agreement had been signed for 96 hectares (237 acres) of land in the eastern province of Rayong for the plant.
The 17.9 billion baht ($491 million) project to produce EVs was approved by Thailand’s Board of Investment last month.
China’s biggest manufacturer of EVs aims to sell 10,000 units in Thailand and export to Southeast Asian and European countries.
Its factory in Thailand will be its latest among more than 30 others in the United States, Brazil, and India.
Thailand is a regional auto production and export base for the world’s top carmakers, including Toyota and Honda and has recently offered incentives including tax breaks and subsidies to attract EV makers.
The company also has an electric battery division, FinDreams Battery, which is the world’s fourth largest producer of electric vehicle batteries with a global market share of 8.8 percent, and a focus mainly on lithium iron phosphate batteries.
On April 4, 2022, BYD announced that it has stopped the production of all automobiles powered only by gasoline engines, with the final gasoline model rolling off the assembly line in March 2022, and will turn its focus to manufacturing innovative high-tech battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars and trucks.
It will continue to produce and supply the components for existing BYD internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles so as to continually provide comprehensive service and after-sales support to existing customers.
The company has mainly based its sales in Mainland China, but is undertaking rapid expansion into the global market, with sales hitting over 100,000 per month in March 2022, and is expecting to sell between 1.5 million to 2 million plug-in EVs in 2022, around 3 to 4 times the volume in 2021.
In June 2022, BYD Auto announced that it had sold about 641,000 EVs in the first half of 2022, overtaking Tesla to become the largest EV manufacturer in the world.
Source: PTI
