China is not well known for their automakers. For many years it has been the United States and Japan who have had the most auto companies. However, in 2003 a Chinese automaker named BYD opened. The Chinese automaker is located in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Peoples Republic of China. BYD Company Limited, which is part of BYD, opened in 1995. They produce 65 percent of the world’s nickel- cadmium batteries, and 30 percent of the world’s lithium-ion mobile phone batteries.
The BYD Chinese automaker has many plans for the electric cars. In December of 2008 the Chinese automaker started selling the world’s first mass produced plug-in hybrid vehicle. In 2009 Volkswagen and the Chinese automaker signed a deal based on the batteries to help Volkswagen create a few hybrid vehicles of their own.
The Chinese automaker is very innovative when it comes to their cost cutting methods. BYD makes most of the cars’ components like the air conditioning, lights, seatbelts, airbags, and electronics. Wang Chuanfu, the CEO stated that making their own components gives them a competitive advantage over other automakers. The fact is the Chinese automaker also creates a number of components for the U.S. and other auto companies like the Japanese. The outsourcing of certain components does save these other countries a bit on the production, but not as much as the Chinese are able to save.
Current models for the Chinese are the BYD F0, BYD F3, BYD F#DM which is dual mode for the plug in hybrid, the BYD F3e.