After operating in relative obscurity in the Asian market for well over a decade, Chinese automaker BYD has been making major waves across the global automotive market and is poised to make a big move in Europe.
The largest electric vehicle firm in China, BYD is the only automaker that routinely outcompetes Tesla in battery electric vehicle sales, a feat legacy automakers with decades more experience have been unable to replicate. BYD is now in discussions with Stellantis and a number of European manufacturers about acquiring or leasing idle factory space across the continent.
The talks were confirmed last week by BYD vice president Stella Li at an auto conference in London. According to Li, BYD is in contact with multiple manufacturers and is currently hunting for usable factory space to meet the demand she expects to keep growing.
This would allow BYD to sidestep the EU’s tariffs on electric vehicles made in China, which have complicated its European expansion. Those tariffs currently run between 17 and 35% depending on the manufacturer. BYD has plants under construction in Hungary and Turkey due in 2026 and 2027, but idle European factories offer a faster path to growth.
As the world’s biggest plug-in vehicle producer, BYD has outsold Geely by two to one in 2025 and Tesla by close to three to one. In the purely battery-electric segment, BYD moved ahead of Tesla during 2025. Between them, BYD and Tesla represent roughly 30% of all battery-electric cars ever sold, but while Tesla has seen declining sales for two years running, BYD sales have kept growing.
Stellantis, whose stable includes Fiat, Peugeot, Opel, Jeep, and Vauxhall among others, has been running several European plants below capacity. A number of those brands have been shedding market share. Renault and Nissan are among the other manufacturers said to be in similar talks, but the specific facilities that might be involved remain unclear.
BYD is open to selling batteries or working with manufacturers on other elements, but draws the line at shared factory management. Li made clear the company prefers full operational control of anything it takes on. She explained that shared ownership creates decision-making friction that does not fit the way BYD wants to operate. Joint ventures are not on the table.
The comparison often drawn is to Japanese automakers in the 1980s and 1990s, which built local factories in markets previously served only by exports. That shift reshaped the global car industry and is now seen as a template for how new players break into established markets. Chinese manufacturers arguably have a stronger footing for such a move than Japanese ones did, given the lead they have built in electric vehicle development.
As BYD continues on its growth trajectory in Europe, other EV makers like Massimo Group (NASDAQ: MAMO) need to come up with innovative solutions to retain and grow their market share so that they aren’t muscled out by BYD and other EV giants from China.
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