BYD to mass produce electric car!

Israel's Clal to import China's BYD electric cars.

Israel's Clal Industries and Investments said on Thursday it signed a deal to import electric cars from China's BYD Auto and sell them in Israel.

Clal, a unit of conglomerate IDB Development, said the agreement -- which still needs various approvals -- was part of Clal's widening of activities in the green energy sector.

"We see these activities as an additional potential growth engine for the company," Clal said in a statement.

BYD's electric cars are expected in Israel and Europe by 2010.

BYD has said the cars could travel 300 km on a single charge. A full charge needs nine hours using its lithium-ion batteries, although they could be charged to 80 percent capacity in 15 minutes, according to BYD.

Israel's government has been pushing for electric cars and is offering heavy tax breaks.

Shai Agassi's Project Better Place is also planning to sell electric cars in Israel in the next few years through its partner, the Renault-Nissan alliance.

Reuters, September 25, 2008

BYD to launch all-electric car in H2, 2009


October 14, 2008

Shanghai, October 14 (Gasgoo.com) Chairman of BYD Auto Co said at the China Hi-Tech Fair yesterday that the company plans to launch its pure electric car by the second half of 2009, reported the Shanghai Securities News.

In a high-level CEO forum during the fair in Shenzhen city, southern China, Mr. Wang Chuanfu said the battery-powered all-electric car to come next year can run 400 km at one charge.

Buffett, the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire, has expressed his wish to drive the car at first hand by the time of its launch, added Wang Chuanfu.

U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, announced in late September it would pay $230 million for a 10 percent stake in BYD to support the Chinese battery and auto company’s 'green' technologies.

Wang also confirmed that BYD is set to sell the F3DM hybrid in China by the end of this year. This F3DM hybrid combines hybrid and electric vehicle systems, with a 110km pure EV range. BYD said they can be recharged to 50% of capacity in just 10 minutes.

"Battery technology is our core expertise, and we think we are well-placed against GM and Toyota," said Chairman Wang Chuanfu at this year's Geneva show.

http://www.gasgoo.com/auto-news/1008022/BYD-to-launch-all-electric-car-in-H2-2009.html

Governor lobbies to bring BYD hybrid car to Oregon

November 23, 2008

SHENZHEN, China -- In this far corner of China's manufacturing heartland, Gov. Ted Kulongoski's dream of making Oregon home to America's green car movement is about to roll off the assembly lines.

At BYD Auto Co., China's fast-growing automotive star, a plug-in electric hybrid sedan is just weeks from meeting millions of Chinese consumers. The F3DM, which runs up to 80 miles on a single charge and packs a 7-gallon tank, will probably launch in the United States by 2010.

Kulongoski, who clinched a deal last week to bring Nissan's pure-electric cars to Oregon, is vying for BYD's bid for a North American pilot site. On Friday, he met with BYD President and Chairman Wang Chuanfu at the company's mammoth headquarters nearly two hours from China's booming industrial zone.

"We're hoping to build a critical mass," Kulongoski said. "We're laying the infrastructure and hoping to bring change at home by reducing greenhouse gases. The most logical place to move toward is electric autos."

On a 10-day business trip in Asia, Kulongoski has trumpeted Oregon's status as the No. 1 hybrid market in the country and promoted an ambitious vision to automakers in Japan and China: electric charging stations every 60 miles along interstates. Tax incentives for Oregonians to buy electric cars. And tax bonuses for drivers to build car chargers in their garages.

If Oregon is successful in claiming a stake in the world's emerging electric car industry, ripples across many other sectors could provide a boost to the state's economy, hurt by the departure of Freightliner and other manufacturers.

Patrick Reiten, president of Pacific Power, said there will be growth -- and challenges -- in meeting the power supply needs that come with electric cars. Pacific Power is owned by Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, which in September bought a 10 percent stake in BYD for about $230 million -- a relationship Kulongoski hopes will help nudge BYD to Oregon.

Bill Wyatt, executive director of the Port of Portland, has met with BYD executives several times. The Port is a major gateway for Japanese and South Korean cars, with about 450,000 Toyotas, Hyundais and Hondas arriving last year. Wyatt said the Port has courted Chinese carmakers in preparation for the flood of Chinese autos expected to hit the U.S. in coming years.

"Eventually, one of these Chinese car manufacturers is going to begin large-scale exports to the United States," Wyatt said. "Whoever it is, we've gotten to know them at this point. When they do, we want to talk to them."

BYD, which could be the nation's first introduction to Chinese-made autos, plans to open five test market sites worldwide, including in Israel, Denmark and Hong Kong. Though company executives have yet to finalize any decisions, Portland and Los Angeles are at the top of the list.

"We have to look at the market to see how people will respond first," said Henry Li, general manager of BYD's auto export trade division. "We're a newcomer. So we have to have a new strategy."

http://www.gasgoo.com/auto-news/1008484/Governor-lobbies-to-bring-BYD-hybrid-car-to-Oregon.html

Electric Revolution

Saturday, 13 December 2008


Cars leave me cold, but not the BYD F3DM. I drove it the other day, and it really is remarkable.

In one way, it is a rather ordinary compact saloon car, though it did have exceptional acceleration when I put my foot down zooming round the factory grounds in Shenzhen, the vast new Chinese city just north of Hong Kong.

This is a plug-in electric car, hence the acceleration, but when the electric battery runs out after 80 miles (128km), the petrol engine switches in seamlessly.

"Oh, just like one of those new eco-friendly hybrid cars," you may think.

But the makers argue that hybrids are more gas-guzzler than battery driven, whereas this model tries to be half and half.

And the makers? Well they are called BYD, a Chinese company which has been in existence for a bare 13 years, and which only recently started making any kind of car at all.

This new dual mode rechargeable car makes its launch appearance in China on 15 December, but BYD's Paul Lin let me have my test drive the other day.

And then when he showed me the company museum, he really set me thinking.

What is a business only 13 years old doing with a museum anyway?

Because the company has such enormous ambitions it wants to tell the world how far it has come and how much further it intends to go.

Rapid growth

Paul Lin showed me how BYD has evolved, starting with rechargeable batteries that soon became standard parts for one third of all the world's mobile phones, following the research speciality of the founder and chairman Wang Chuanfu.

And the modest battery making company grew and grew.

Wang Chuanfu soon saw that battery powered cars might be the future.

BYD knew a lot about batteries, and it was not daunted by the complexities of car-making either.

Six years ago, it bought two established Chinese car firms, and now BYD has seven huge plants with 130,000 employees.

The car I drove is made at the new headquarters factory - a giant one in Shenzhen, a city which was just a fishing town 30 years ago, with some 70,000 inhabitants.

Thanks to China's rush to modernise, Shenzhen is now part of the global manufacturing powerhouse in the Pearl River Delta, with an estimated population of 14m.

Wheel of modernisation

BYD's vast new factory did not exist 15 months ago, and they had to level several hills and fill in several lakes to create the site.

The workers mostly live in vast dormitories close by.

Like most of the Shenzhen workforce, they have migrated into the city from distant country places, moving from poverty in search of the fabled better life, spinning the great wheel of China's modernisation.

The size and scale of what BYD has already achieved is breathtaking, but that is nothing compared to its ambition.

This company has already made public its aim to be the number one car firm in China by the year 2015, and then - deep breath - number one in the whole world in 2025.

Despite my scepticism, Paul Lin had no doubt about this. The current fate of the American car industry suggests there may be room at the top some time before that date.


But to Paul Lin and the company he is part of, this ambition is entirely natural.

Car making is less difficult than high technology, they argue, and many of the techniques they have learned in high tech can now be applied to the automobile.

Remarkable endorsement

I put my foot down and revved almost silently across the factory campus in my (sample) new car, and wondered about the future.

As an exporter, China is going to be badly hit by the global recession, but already the best factories are evolving up the technology chain in much the same way as BYD has transformed itself from a supplier of other people's mobile phone batteries into a car maker with its own name on the front.

Critics say this is a copycat car, but that is how the Japanese auto industry started.

And in September there was a remarkable endorsement of BYD when even as global stock markets were plunging, the canniest American investor of them all, Warren Buffet of Omaha, Nebraska, paid $230m (£155m) for a 10% stake in the Chinese company.

Mr Buffett is a quite notorious investor for the long-term, not the quick buck, so he must recognise something in those initials BYD.

The company says they stand for "Build Your Dream", but they could mean absolutely anything.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7779261.stm