BYD slows down plans to build EV plant in Vietnam, report says

BYD has slowed plans to build an electric vehicle (EV) plant in Vietnam, a manager of the industrial park where the plant would be located said at a shareholders' meeting on Thu, according to a report from Reuters.

The Vietnamese government said last May that BYD had decided to build a factory to produce and assemble EVs in Phu Tho province in northern Vietnam, where the company already has a factory that makes tablets for Apple, the report noted.

BYD has slowed down its plans to start construction due to its strategy and a slowdown in the EV market, said Luong Thanh Tung, vice chairman of Gelex Group, the operator of the industrial park where BYD would build the new plant.

After lengthy negotiations, BYD had agreed to reserve 100 hectares of commercial land at the Phu Ha industrial park for the EV factory, Tung said, according to Reuters.

After delays, the two sides are now looking for the right time to start the project, he told a shareholders' meeting.

Vietnam's auto market is small. Passenger car sales in Vietnam were 214,619 units in 2023, down 25% from 2022, according to data from the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers Association (VAMA).

BYD's main production and sales take place in China and it has begun building factories in several overseas markets.

In May 2023, BYD started construction of its plant in Uzbekistan and started production in Jan this year. It is also building passenger car plants in Thailand, Hungary and Brazil.

On Mar 9, Bloomberg reported that BYD sent a delegation to Jalisco, Mexico, to consider building an EV plant there.

BYD is targeting overseas sales of 500,000 units in 2024 and 1 million by 2025, the company's chairman and president, Wang Chuanfu, said at an investor event yesterday.

In 2024, BYD's full-year sales are expected to grow more than 20% from 2023, Wang said.

That means BYD expects to sell more than 3.63 million vehicles globally this year, considering it sold 3,024,417 NEVs in 2023.