- The Chinese carmaker BYD has gradually become the largest Chinese carmaker and the leader of the Chinese market thanks to its range of plug-in hybrid vehicles (of which it has become the largest producer in the world) or battery electric vehicles (of which it has become one of the largest producers in the world). Thanks to the strong growth in its sales, BYD has become the eighth largest carmaker in the world in 2024, behind Nissan and Ford, but ahead of Honda and Suzuki.
- BYD was one of the first Chinese carmakers to want to establish itself on the European market. Last year, it announced that it would build an assembly plant in Hungary. BYD already has an electric bus assembly plant in Hungary, in Komárom, in the north of the country, which was inaugurated in 2017 and which has an annual production capacity of 400 battery electric buses exported throughout Europe.
- The new assembly plant under construction is located in Szeged, in the south of the country. It will start production of passenger cars at the end of 2025, according to the carmaker. The models produced in this factory will first be the Dolphin sedan (battery electric C-segment sedan) launched in China in 2021 and the Atto3 SUV (battery electric C-segment SUV) launched in China in 2022, but two other models (B-segment) will follow in 2026 and 2027 (Atto2 and Seagull) in order to saturate the capacities of the Szeged factory, set at 150,000 vehicles per year in 2025, which could be doubled to 300,000 per year in 2030. Thanks to this production carried out in Europe, BYD could escape the possible additional taxes decided by the European Commission on Chinese electric cars imported from China.
