BYD announced the Szeged site in December 2023 and broke ground on it in 2024, on an industrial park on the edge of the southern Hungarian city. It is the company’s first passenger-car factory in Europe, designed to reach an annual capacity of up to 300,000 vehicles once fully ramped up, phased in from an initial run of around 150,000.
Equipment installation and trial assembly runs began in January 2026. BYD executive vice president Stella Li told Reuters in June 2026 that series production had slipped roughly a year from the original end-2025 target, to the fourth quarter of 2026, with full-volume output following in 2027.
The first two models for the line are the Dolphin Surf, a subcompact electric hatchback sold in China as the Seagull, and the Atto 2 compact SUV, offered in both electric and plug-in hybrid form. Building locally lets BYD sidestep the European Union’s tariffs on electric vehicles imported from China, in place since October 2024.
The site employs around 960 people, roughly 70% of them Hungarian, alongside a separate BYD research and design centre and European headquarters in Budapest.