BYD will build an assembly plant in Turkey
- The Chinese carmaker BYD, the world's second largest carmaker of battery electric vehicles behind Tesla (650,000 units sold over the first 5 months of 2024 compared to 765,000 Tesla) has announced that it will build an assembly factory in Turkey and that this construction is imminent.
- This construction of a BYD assembly plant on the borders of the European Union is in addition to the ongoing construction of a BYD assembly plant in Hungary, which tends to prove that BYD is the most active Chinese carmaker and the most ambitious with regard to the European market.
- These constructions of two BYD battery electric vehicle assembly plants for the European market seem to respond (in anticipation) to European measures aimed at overtaxing BEVs from China and removing their ecological bonus in certain countries. Turkey is in fact not affected by these additional taxes on cars produced on its soil.
- The two Hungarian and Turkish assembly plants are planned to each produce 150,000 cars each year, a volume which could be doubled in the 2030s if the models produced there are successful.
- The first cars will leave the Hungarian factory at the beginning of 2026, the deadline for those to leave the Turkish factory has not yet been announced, but it could be either in 2027 or 2028.