“In five years we will be one of the three main manufacturers in the world, I am convinced”

Turn the bus and face a huge industrial -looking door. Two inputs controlled by a garita under a gray structure topped in its upper area with three letters and their explanation with Hanzis (The Chinese characters that give it name).

The bus takes various streets, turns left and right. Finally, take a last turn and leave us under a roofed space. To our left, a huge staircase guarded by two gigantic lions guarded by an immense and lonely esplanade. In the background five buildings are drawn that with its height, of no less than 30 floors, break with the plain of the square.

To our right, the entrance door to an immense hall after the demonstrations of some of the more dotteras technologies of the Chinese car market. Yes, that one He is arriving in Europe and who aspires to become a reference.

Will make it clear to us Stella Li, BYD Vice President. We ask what the company expects in the next five years, what will be after five years. Look with the decision he faces any as he asks to be done: “We will be one of the three main manufacturers in the world. I am convinced.”

A meteoric career

The image that projects the headquarters of Byd in Shenzhen (China) is the same as the one that gives off a good part of the city. The immensity of the plazas of Soviet reminiscences are mixed with gigantic skyscrapers of somewhat decadent appearance in their wrapping but that, without a doubt, welcome inside the gears that move the latest technology of the country.

The gears are human that live in these buildings. More than 17 million people that push to make Shenzhen a megaciudad that drinks from a clearly communist appearance past and now lives from wild capitalism that permeates all corners.

It is the city of shopping centers full of ultra -realistic falsification stores but also that of skyscrapers who play with breaking your neck, immense headquarters of Chinese banks, and dozens of skyscrapers that are thrown into an orgy of lights, colors and music three times a day to demonstrate the world that they have enough strength to wear their LED panel buildings and put them to dance to the rhythm they want to dance.

The rhythm of the gears that hide under these last glazed moles are clear: money and technology.

Crossing the huge glazed doors of the Byd headquarters already gives us an idea of ​​what we are going to find inside. Next to the marble and columns that never seem Byd manufactures in vertical integration, Much of its success.

And it is that of the batteries that began to manufacture in 1994, the year in which the company was founded, it has passed to a giant that has already manufactured more than 10 million vehicles, which exceeded four million cars produced in just one year in 2024 and that is much more than that. It is a company that also manufactures luxury vehicles, subway cars, buses and an enormous amalgam of components for them, from the batteries to the semiconductors or heat pumps.

“Our integral approach to production and batteries give us a unique competitive advantage. We hope to have a solid presence on all continents, with Europe as one of our priority markets”, Stella Li emphasizes us who knows where we want to go with that question where they will be in the next five years.

That vertical integration is all that they want to teach us in our visit to the central headquarters. Start with a factory miniturization. The classic miniature trains game is made up of the rails through which vehicles that move the doors and other parts of the chassis move.

We will see it with our own eyes the next day but we will get an idea of ​​how chassis and mechanical set marry to give way to the end of the line to a little Yangwang U8 in miniature, the huge SUV of more than five meters that is able to float on water.

Later, at the end of the visit itself, we will have the opportunity to get on one and check The maximum luxury that proposes byd. Vehicles as excessive as well finished, topped with materials that fit the precision of the best models in the market. And with the eccentricities of the Chinese market claims, such as the drones parking that carries one of the vehicles parked at the entrance.

We have entered for your past, we will go out for your future. Among others, the load of 1 MW for electric cars, a technology that Byd already has available in two carsbut that, Stella Li recognizes us, is thought above all for trucks and car fleets.

Live, the system overwhelms, connecting to the same car two hoses that provide 500 kW each. The great advantage, in addition, is that if the car does not admit this type of load, the supplier can nurture two cars to a maximum of 500 kW, powers with which we do not dream in Spain for the moment. At the moment, they will put just over 4,000 points on the street.

We were notified

The strategy is based on pillars of all kinds: a huge variety of products that seem to be cannibalized, its own technology sustained by an almost inconceivable variety of patents and a groundbreaking attitude towards the designs of the market in which enormous equipment and low prices are combined.

That patent reaíla is proud throughout a wall that could well measure 20 meters. From top to bottom, talked with the certificates of each of them. They are, of course, those that allowed Byd to create LFP batteries that, they show us proud, They can be crossed by a nail and Do not burn in the process. The NCM facing the same test on your right does not run the same fate. A flash shakes the room and the heat of the explosion, it is felt even on the other side of the glass.

Safety tested. “Security must be for everyone.” For Stella Li, “our business contemplates other ways for profitability.” Of what the vice president of ByD now speaks of the eye of God, a system that we have also tried on our trip, which arises as the great Game Changer of the brand.

The company recently announced that its eye of God, the company’s autonomous driving system, will be available in all your serial cars. What has so far been one of the main extra equipment in vehicles and a space limited to the largest vehicles, Byd puts it on the street in a car that, to direct change, barely costs 9,000 euros.

“We are absolutely transparent. Our prices here and in Europe are the result of our strategy. It may seem aggressive, but it is a commitment to penetrate the market strongly, ”says Li when asked about byd’s ability to sustain this rhythm over time.

In fact, seen what was seen in one of the dealers that the brand has distributed by China, it seems that the European strategy is just a children’s game. As demonstration, electric cars for just over 12,000 euros to direct change. A plug -in hybrid Berlin that did not reach 10,000 euros. And on the wall, watching everything, a family photo with the face of all employees.

“Congratulations, a vacuum has touched him,” they tell one of our colleagues when he breaks an egg. In the delivery of each car, a ceremony is held that emphasizes the transcendental of the moment, the importance of the event. If she is a woman you dress the flower car. If he is a man, he breaks an egg while a worker plays a huge timbale.

The egg hides a small gift that accompanies the vehicle. What in Europe are the classic carpets delivered by the dealers almost showing some condescension, here is a part of the party of delivery of a new car.

Conservatism and progress under the same roof.

The conservatism that led Byd to continue working where they were born, the batteries. The progress that has made them undisputed leaders of new energy vehicles, aspiring to produce 5.5 million of vehicles this year. It seems that the fifth place as the world’s largest manufacturer will be left behind.

At the moment, Byd is already a giant with more than 100 factories in China, 60,000 patentsone million workers of which more 100,000 employees are engineers.

“I don’t have a concrete figure of how far we can go but we want to be one of the three main manufacturers in the world.”

They are words of Stella Li.

We were notified.

Photos | Xataka and Byd

In Xataka | Thousands of Byd cars have become obsolete for their own promises. Solution: lower prices