Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant Build Your Dreams (BYD) announced Tuesday its plans to follow through with building its first plant in Mexico, no matter the outcome of the U.S. election.
Doubts had surfaced in September after a Bloomberg News report alleged that BYD had postponed its plans for a Mexico plant indefinitely due to uncertainty about the U.S. election. As the Republican candidate for U.S. president, Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to impose prohibitively huge tariffs on Chinese imports.
BYD’s Americas head said that BYD plans to build a factory in Mexico but stresses that this is for the Mexican market and not for export to the US.
She said the US market is too complicated, including the politics, whereas in China if you don’t go electric, “you have no future.” pic.twitter.com/07bmyQeRDw
— Kyle Chan (@kyleichan) July 20, 2024
In February, BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li told Yahoo Finance in no uncertain terms that BYD has no plans to enter the U.S. market via Mexico.
At the time of the Bloomberg report, BYD officials denied that they had wavered in their resolution to build the announced Mexican plant.
“BYD has a very strong interest in the Mexican market, and to give the people here our products, we intend to build a factory here,” Ray Zou, president of BYD’s Mexican operations told the newspaper El País.
The company has no intention of exporting vehicles from the Mexico plant to the U.S., El País reported, although some experts have theorized that BYD building a plant in Mexico is a strategy to attempt to skirt U.S. tariffs on Chinese products by importing their cars to the U.S. from inside the USMCA free-trade zone.
BYD will reveal the new plant’s location soon, reported Forbes.
“Since the swearing-in of the new Mexican government,” Zou added, “we have had more close conversations with the authorities to determine the best location.”
Jorge Vallejo, BYD’s general director in Mexico, told Reuters late in August that the firm had narrowed the list of potential sites for the plant to three candidate states. Vallejo, however, did not name them. In October, Vallejo said that he expects BYD to sell 50,000 EVs in Mexico this year, and 100,000 in 2025.
By the end of the year, BYD will confirm the details of its manufacturing plant in Mexico, which is expected to produce 300,000 units and create over 10,000 jobs.
José Miranda, director of Marketing and Communications for BYD’s Americas operations, stated that the U.S.’s imposition of duties on products from China would not influence BYD’s investment decisions in Mexico.
BYD presented a new SUV model for Mexico on Tuesday called the BYD Yuan Pro, with prices starting at 599,880 pesos ($29,472).
Several automotive companies, including BYD, Zeekr, MG Motor and Yadea, have stood firm on plans to invest in Mexico, with many developing manufacturing plants.
With reports from El País, Forbes, Imagen Radio and Reuters
