BYD’s Thailand Factory Plan Underscores How China’s EV Industry Is Going Global

Wednesday’s announcement of manufacturing plans in Thailand by BYD, the world’s largest maker of electric vehicles, underscores how China’s suppliers are seizing upon growing demand for energy-saving vehicles to expand globally.

Warren Buffett-backed BYD said it signed a contract with WHA Corp. Public Company Ltd., Thailand’s leading developer of industrial estates, to purchase land to build electric passenger cars in the Southeast Asia country.

The site will be BYD’s first wholly owned facility to produce passenger cars outside of China. Though relatively little-known in the U.S., where it makes buses, the Shenzhen-headquartered industry heavyweight boasts a stock-market capitalization at times this year exceeded GM’s and Ford’s combined. BYD declined to say how much it expected to invest in the Thai project.

On Monday, meanwhile, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL, the world’s largest supplier of EV batteries, signed a real estate agreement in Hungary with the city of Debrecen that marked the official launch of a plant there, Xinhua News Agency reported.

CATL said last month it planned to invest 7.34 billion euros to build the facility, its second in Europe following a plant in Germany. Debrecen is close to CATL customers Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen, the company said last month.

“The greenfield project in Hungary will be a giant leap in CATL’s global expansion,” according to a statement by CATL Chairman Robin Zeng in August. Zeng is one of China’s richest business leaders, with a fortune worth $37 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today.

CATL isn’t the only China EV maker eyeing Hungary. On July 29, Péter Szijjártó, the Minister of Hungarian Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Hui Zhang, vice president of NIO Europe Office, said a NIO battery-swapping equipment plant will begin operations there in September. NIO, headquartered in Shanghai, also makes electric passenger vehicles.

China’s EV companies are competitive globally due in part to an early domestic focus on the market and a wish to leapfrog over older global incumbents that dominate mainstream internal combustion engine technology. More EVs were sold in China in 2021 — 3.3 million — than in the entire world in 2020, according to a report by the International Energy Agency. In the first quarter of 2022, sales in China more than doubled compared with the first quarter of 2021, it said. Overall, China boasts the world’s largest automobile market and second-largest economy.

Success at China EV upstarts such as NIO and Xpeng has turned their founders into billionaires. NIO Chairman William Li is worth $3 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today, and Xpeng’s He Xiaopeng holds an estimated fortune of $2.8 billion.

The U.S. isn’t getting left out of new investment by China-based suppliers to the EV industry. SEMCORP Advanced Materials Group, also known as Yunnan Energy New Material, said in May it will build a plant to make separator film for EV batteries in Sidney, Ohio, creating nearly 1,200 jobs with $73 million in annual payroll and $916 million in capital investment.

“The Sidney facility is one of the biggest investments in our company’s history because we know the United States is strongly committed to building the supply chains for EVs and energy storage here at home,” according to a statement by CEO Paul Lee, a U.S. citizen with an estimated fortune with $6.5 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today.

CATL is also reportedly looking for a North American site. Reuters said on Aug. 3 that it plans to supply lithium-ion batteries to Ford and start battery production in North America by 2026, citing “a person with knowledge of the matter.”

Recently announced investments in vehicles and components follow lithium mining acquisitions by Chinese companies in Argentina (CATL, Zijin Mining), Australia (Tianqi Lithium) and Canada (Ganfeng Lithium), according to a report last year by S&P.

Further subtle evidence this week of the continuing appetite for growth by China’s industry leaders: Ganfeng said it planned to change its name from the merely modest “Ganfeng Lithium Co.” to “Ganfeng Lithium Group Co.”

“The reasons for changing the company’s name are to precisely reflect the diversification of the upstream, midstream and downstream lithium ecological business of the company, clearly improve the recognition of the main business of the company, and clearly state the company’s strategic positioning of being a global leading lithium ecological enterprise,” it said.

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@rflannerychina