How Belgrade Lost Race for Electric Vehicle Factory to Szeged?

The works on the construction of the electric car factory that the Chinese company is to build in Szeged are beginning on March 1, and the production is to start in June next year.

The construction of the factory is beginning as soon as possible, only three months after the Hungarian minister of foreign affairs and trade, Peter Szijjarto, announced that BYD had chosen a location near Szeged, from which it intended to conquer the European market.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD became the biggest seller of electric cars, thereby surpassing its main competitor, the company Tesla. The plans of BYD are to be among the five biggest sellers of electric cars in Europe (around 750,000 vehicles a year), writes the Danas daily.

No special explanation has been given so far as to why the Chinese company has chosen Szeged of all places as the location of its first European factory of electric cars, so it remains unclear whether the only reason is that the Hungarian government has decided to subsidize the extension of the infrastructure needed for the factory with EUR 118.6 million or that Hungary has announced its intentions to get involved in the production of lithium batteries.

However, what’s much more intriguing is who the potential candidates, Szeged’s competition, for the construction of the factory were.

According to reliable sources, the other candidates were Ghent in Belgium, Sofia in Bulgaria and Belgrade in Serbia. Based on exact criteria, the Chinese producer made a ranking list, where Szeged placed first with 511 points.

Second place went to Belgrade with 503 points, Sofia had slightly over 100, and Ghent placed fourth. Not even the decision of the local self-government to offer a five-year tax moratorium to the Chinese company, otherwise not allowed on the state level due to the EU regulations, helped the Belgian city. As for Belgrade, the application did not cite a precise location for the potential factory, but only that it would be built “in the city’s area.”

Minister Szijjarto has stated that the BYD factory is one of the biggest investments in the Hungarian economic history, and the expectation is for that factory alone to employ several thousand people, although the plans are for 20,000 to 40,000 jobs to be created around that business.

Chinese company BYD

Peter Szijjarto

electric car factory