BYD Co., a leading Chinese electrified vehicle maker, started producing batteries in Brazil this month to supply locally assembled electric vehicles.
The $2.7 million plant — in Manaus, a city in the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas — is building BYD’s proprietary lithium iron phosphate batteries mainly for electric buses.
The factory, which can produce 18,000 battery modules a year at full capacity, is expected to deliver 1,000 battery modules by the end of September, the Chinese company said.
The battery models will be supplied to electric buses assembled at BYD’s plant opened in 2015 in Campinas, a city in the southeast Brazilian state of Sao Paulo.
BYD mainly assembles electric buses outside China.
The Manaus factory is its second battery production site outside China.
In 2013, BYD opened its first overseas electric bus plant, along with a battery factory, in Lancaster, Calif.
In the past few years, the Chinese company has also established electric bus assembly plants in Ecuador, the United Kingdom, France and Hungary.
BYD, based in the south China city of Shenzhen, is listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai. It is partly owned by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett.
In the first eight months, the company delivered 226,792 vehicles globally, a decline of 23 percent from a year earlier. The latest sales tally is made up of 135,732 gasoline models as well as 91,060 EVs and plug-in hybrids.