BYD to start assembling vehicles in Bahia, reducing imports

BYD is about to begin assembling electric cars at a new factory in Brazil, possibly as early as this month, said its top executive in the country, aiming to reduce imports as tariffs begin to rise in its largest market outside China.

Alexandre Baldy, BYD’s senior vice president in Brazil, said the goal is to assemble around 50,000 cars this year at the Bahia plant from imported kits, adding that the company is negotiating a lower tax rate for these vehicles.

“We should inaugurate it in the coming days,” Baldy said in an interview late Friday without specifying a date, as final regulatory approvals are still pending. “What we planned for this year has already been imported so we could take advantage [of the moment] before the import tax hike that came into effect on July 1.”

To benefit from temporarily lower tariffs, BYD had shipped a large volume of finished cars to Brazil this year—about 22,000 vehicles from China in the first five months of the year, according to Reuters calculations.

This led to complaints in the Brazilian automotive industry that BYD was favoring Chinese manufacturing over production at its new factory in Bahia, where a labor investigation and heavy rains have disrupted plans.

A state labor secretary said in May that the factory would only be “fully operational” by the end of 2026. However, Baldy said the facility is on track to begin full local production in July 2026 after assembling vehicles from “complete knockdown” (CKD) kits over the next 12 months.

Once fully operational, he said, the Camaçari complex is expected to generate up to 20,000 direct and indirect jobs.

High expectations for the operation—located on the site of a former Ford factory taken over by BYD in 2023—were shaken in December when the Public Labor Ministry filed charges of labor abuses involving Chinese contractors hired to build the complex.

In May, the MPT (Public Labor Ministry) filed a lawsuit holding the Chinese automaker and contractors responsible for alleged human trafficking and subjecting workers to “conditions analogous to slavery,” after failed attempts at settling.

“We have always sought to respect Brazilian law, human dignity,” Baldy said, adding that the company wants to resolve. However, he did not explain why settlement efforts had failed.

Source: InfoMoney

Sharing is caring!