The Covid outbreak in Xi'an earlier in the year had an impact on BYD's production, while the situation elsewhere brought relatively little impact, the company's source said.
(Image credit: BYD)
Production at many automakers was forced to come to a standstill during the latest round of Covid outbreaks in China, and BYD (OTCMKTS: BYDDY, HKG: 1211) appears to be an exception.
The resurgence of the Covid pandemic has caused many car companies to be affected to varying degrees, the China Securities Journal quoted a BYD source as saying today.
BYD is in a relatively better position, with the Covid outbreak in Xi'an earlier in the year having an impact on the company's production, while the situation elsewhere has had a relatively minor impact, the source said.
Since March, with the outbreak of Covid in Jilin and Shanghai, control measures have had a big impact on the auto supply chain.
Nio said on April 9 that it had suspended production due to Covid causing partners in the supply chain to stop production. On April 14, the Economic Observer quoted an unnamed Nio insider as saying that its supply chain has slightly recovered and the Hefei production base was gradually resuming production.
Since Shanghai entered a phased lockdown from March 28, production at Tesla's factory in the city has been suspended until now, with no indication yet on when production will resume.
Earlier today, there were rumors that Tesla said in an answer to a US investor that Giga Shanghai would resume work only in mid-May at the earliest, with the parts supply chain resuming at that time. However, the Shanghai Securities News earlier today quoted a Tesla China source as saying that the rumors were false.
If companies in Shanghai and neighboring cities' auto supply chains haven't been able to find a way to dynamically resume production, then by May probably all car companies in China will have to shut down production, Xpeng CEO He said in his WeChat status Thursday.
Richar Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and CEO of smart car BU, said in his WeChat status today while sharing media reports about He's comments that if production cannot resume in Shanghai, all technology and industrial industries involved with the Shanghai supply chain will be completely shut down production after May, especially the auto industry.
The pressure on production and sales in China's auto industry in April was indeed great, 21Jingji quoted Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association, as saying today, adding that China's auto industry should not come to a complete shutdown, and that the key depends on how they save themselves.
Back to BYD, whose plant in Xi'an, a city in northwest China's Shaanxi province, was shut down late last year as a result of the Covid pandemic.
The Xi'an plant is one of BYD's most important bases, where some versions of the hot-selling sedan Qin and all models of the compact SUV Song series are produced.
On December 23 last year, Cailian quoted BYD sources as saying that the Xi'an Covid had some impact on production at its campus in the city and that the company was actively responding.
In early January, BYD said production at its Xi'an site was largely back to normal on January 3.
The latest Covid outbreak in Shanghai did not affect BYD too much, probably related to the fact that the company supplies a lot of its own components, including semiconductors.
The company entered the industrial MCU sector in 2007 and ranks first in China in terms of market share for industrial-grade touch MCUs.
BYD Semiconductor then extended its business from industrial-grade MCUs across to automotive MCUs and launched the first generation of 8-bit automotive MCUs in 2018 and the first generation of 32-bit automotive MCUs in 2019, which are bulk loaded in BYD's full range of models.
In May last year, BYD Semiconductor announced that its installed base of automotive MCUs exceeded 10 million units. If the industrial-grade MCU chips were counted, the cumulative shipment exceeds 2 billion units.
On top of that, BYD has production sites in several Chinese cities where no large Covid outbreaks have occurred this year.
Technology media outlet My Drivers reported on April 8 that BYD's industrial park in Fuzhou city, Jiangxi province, will start mass production on April 15, its fifth vehicle production site in China.
BYD has not officially announced the start of mass production of the Fuzhou site.
Previously BYD had four vehicle production bases in China, located in Shenzhen, Xi'an, Changsha and Changzhou, with a capacity of 600,000 units in 2021.
BYD is also building new production bases in Hefei, Zhengzhou, Jinan and Xiangyang.
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