- BYD will assemble cars in Russia, starting with the F3 sedan.
- Tooling has already been completed at the plant.
- BYD expects to build 10,000 units in Russia by the end of this year.
TAGANROG, Russia — Ambitious Chinese automaker BYD will assemble cars in Russia by partnering with Russian company TagAZ, as part of its strategy to expand overseas.
Russia's Kommersant newspaper on Tuesday reported that TagAZ, located in Taganrog, had completed tooling for BYD's F3 sedan, citing statements from the companies.
BYD, a leading electric-car maker with backing from United States billionaire Warren Buffett, aims to turn out 10,000 cars in Russia by the end of this year, the newspaper said. Teaming up with TagAZ will allow BYD to replace South Korea's Hyundai Motor as the Russian firm's main partner, the paper added, citing an unnamed employee.
No BYD official was available for comment yesterday.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, earlier said overseas expansion is one of the company's core strategies as it sees the market potential of China's price-competitive vehicles as huge. BYD also intends to build 40 overseas factories by 2025, each with an annual capacity of 300,000 units, to help drive its global ambition to be the world's largest automaker by 2025. BYD, which last month allied with Daimler to research development of electric cars in China, will start selling its F3DM plug-in electric cars in the U.S. as early as the end of this year.
Analysts said the entry of BYD into the Russian market will increase competition between it and other Chinese automakers such as Chery Automobile and Great Wall in emerging markets. Chery plans to invest the equivalent of $1 billion to build a plant in Belarus that will export its vehicles to Russia.
Last year, about 24,500 Chinese-branded vehicles were sold in Russia.
BYD also has plans to build three to five plants in China by 2015 to boost its total capacity to more than 900,000 units annually. The carmaker now has a factory in Xi'an, in western China's Shaanxi Province, and a Shenzhen plant in south China.
Inside Line says: BYD continues to build on its dream of world domination. — Vivian Jin, Correspondent
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