If BYD sets up a power battery assembly plant in Hungary, it will give a boost to supplies to Tesla's Berlin factory, local media said.
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BYD (OTCMKTS: BYDDY) is hiring in Hungary, signaling that it is moving ahead with the construction of a new battery assembly plant there, local media outlet Cailian reported today.
The Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) and battery giant is hiring for positions in Hungary that include a director of government affairs, as well as an equipment engineer, the latter of which requires candidates to be able to take care of equipment maintenance for the production lines.
Peter Szijjarto, Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, announced in late June during a visit to Shenzhen, where BYD is headquartered, that the NEV maker will set up a battery assembly plant in the northern Hungarian town of Fót, with an investment of 10 billion forints ($29.8 million), the report noted.
BYD will further expand its presence in Hungary by setting up a plant in Fót, and the new factory will not produce batteries but only assemble them, Szijjarto said at the time.
If BYD sets up a power battery assembly plant in Hungary, it will give a boost to the supply of Tesla's Berlin factory, the report said.
As Tesla's Berlin factory begins production of the rear-wheel-drive Model Y equipped with BYD batteries, BYD's power battery business overseas will see high growth, Miao Wei, China's minister of industry and information technology from 2010 to 2020, said in early June at the 2023 World Power Battery Conference.
Although Hungary is not a traditional automobile manufacturing powerhouse, the country has established a European auto parts and vehicle manufacturing capacity, relying on the transfer of the German automobile manufacturing industry and relatively cheap cost advantages.
BYD is no stranger to the Hungarian market, and it has an all-electric bus plant in the country, the company's first in Europe, the Cailian report noted.
In June 2021, BYD delivered its first all-electric bus to Volánbusz, Hungary's largest public transportation operator. Currently, BYD contributes 42 percent of the new buses in operation there, according to the report.
BYD is China's largest NEV maker and the world's second-largest power battery maker.
BYD's retail sales in China in June were 231,230 units, up 74.4 percent year-on-year, and accounted for 34.7 percent of the NEV market share, data released on July 12 by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) showed.
The company installed 38.1 GWh of power batteries from January to May, placing it in second place with a 16.1 percent share, behind CATL's 36.3 percent, data released by South Korean market researcher SNE Research on July 5 showed.
Previously, several of BYD's local counterparts have launched plant constructions in Hungary.
CATL signed a pre-purchase land agreement with the Hungarian city of Debrecen on September 5, 2022, marking the official launch of its factory project in the country, the battery maker previously said.
The project has an investment of €7.34 billion and a planned capacity of 100 GWh, CATL said at the time.
Eve Energy's board of directors agreed in early June that its subsidiary EVE Power Hungary Kft would build a project for large cylindrical batteries for passenger cars in Hungary, with an investment of up to RMB 9.97 billion ($1.4 billion).
On September 16, 2022, Nio (NYSE: NIO) announced that its Nio Power Europe plant in Budapest, Hungary, saw the first battery swap station come off the line.
($1 = 335.91 forints, $1= RMB 7.1626)
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