BYD is open to manufacturing components or potentially complete vehicles in Australia, following prime minister Anthony Albanese suggesting recently that technology advances accompanying the global rise of EVs could provide an opportunity for Australia to reboot its automotive manufacturing industry, reports CarExpert.
Asked at an official media event in Melbourne if the Chinese carmaker had spoken with the Australian government about this, BYD VP Liu Xueliang said: “Not in the plan yet… maybe our priority will be sales volume, and fulfilling customer needs first, but BYD is very open, so anything is possible.”
“You’ve seen the [BYD] energy storage system, but in the future, not just passenger vehicles – we’re bringing more commercial vehicles. Because I see it is a really hard time for a lot of commercial vehicle owners because the diesel price has skyrocketed,” he added.
Liu was speaking at Port Melbourne, where the Zhengzhou – one of eight roll-on/roll-off (RORO) vessels operated by BYD – had begun unloading 4,309 vehicles shipped from Shanghai.
With a high level of vertical integration, BYD owns a lot of its supply chain, which allows it to control costs. In Australia, it’s now in second place behind Toyota, already operates facilities in Thailand, Brazil and Uzbekistan – plus a battery plant in California – and has plans for multiple production facilities in Europe.
Australia and China have had a free trade agreement (FTA) in place since 2015, when the sun was setting on Australian car manufacturing (Ford shut up shop in 2016, Holden and Toyota in 2017). As a result, Chinese vehicles attract no tariffs or import duties, as is also the case for vehicles imported from Japan and Thailand, among other nations with which Australia has FTAs.
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because australia dont have meetee , dont have unelected former unmo minister johari
Now the Durian Runtuh is running away?
This tax income could be for Malaysian.
It is not like the Australian interested to work with thier hands on at the factory?
“Australia no longer has mass-market foreign brand car assembling factories, as all domestic car manufacturing (Holden, Ford, Toyota) ceased by 2017”
Yes, exactly. Every single new passenger car and light ute/pickup truck brand sold in Australia is a 100% CBU import.
If BYD opens a plant in Perak, the economy and GDP revenue would likely rise. The massive growth of infrastructure near the plants is spurring the development of housing, retail, and F&B businesses, while creating new opportunities for university students and kindergartens.
Australians do not fabricate their own cars; they are 100% Completely Built Up (CBU) imports. However, since Australia now brings in battery electric vehicle (BEV) pioneers like BYD, they could also bring in Tesla, whose sales rank in the top 10 in Australia.