BYD, China's Electric Car Maker, is About to Get Busier

BYD, China's Electric Car Maker, is About to Get Busier

BYD, China's electric car maker, is about to get a lot busier.byd china electric car It plans to roughly double the number of sales outlets it operates for passenger cars in Singapore and the Philippines this year. The move is the latest sign that the company is accelerating its aggressive push into Asia, where it hopes to challenge Elon Musk's Tesla as the world's top electric vehicle maker.

The new outlets, which will be open in conjunction with dealerships, will also serve as repair centers and provide test drives for potential buyers, said James Ng, the managing director of passenger cars for the two markets.byd china electric car BYD is seeking to expand in other parts of the region as well, he added.

Chinese EV companies are gaining ground on their European rivals in part because they can offer competitively priced vehicles.byd china electric car European Union customs data show that EV shipments from Chinese companies have skyrocketed in the continent, rising to over 9 percent of the market last year, from 0.5 percent in 2021. This is in large part due to government subsidies, but other factors are also at play. The cheapest models from Chinese companies are typically small, with long-range, affordable lithium car batteries that have allowed them to quickly gain market share in the low end of the market.

Elliot Richards, who runs the Fully Charged YouTube channel and specializes in Chinese EVs, says that while BYD's cheapest offerings aren't the best, they do offer reliable, simple cars that consumers seem to be eager to buy.byd china electric car What's more, he points out, is that the company is vertically integrated, meaning it controls every aspect of its business from design to production. For example, it owns its own lithium mines and processes them into the lithium-ion batteries that power its EVs.

This approach has made the company a relentless discounter in the brutal price war that began in China last year and has unseated Tesla as the top seller of electric vehicles there, though most of its sales are to government agencies and corporate fleets. It's also experimenting with innovative drive systems that could change the way we think about electric cars. Its flagship Han model, for instance, boasts a remarkable single-charge range of over 605 kilometers (376.4 miles) and features such as a freestanding infotainment screen that can be rotated from landscape to portrait mode and even flipped horizontally for passengers to use on the go.

Richards notes that while the Chinese auto industry has become a global leader in the manufacturing of EV components, such as motors and batteries, it remains far behind its US counterparts when it comes to designing and building complete cars. And this is one of the reasons why the US hasn't seen a glut of cheap EVs on its streets yet. US policymakers such as President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden have imposed ultranationalist trade policies that keep Chinese EVs out of the country. That may be changing as the two parties prepare for a Democratic takeover of the White House in 2023, which could mean new rules that would allow EVs from places like China to enter the market.

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