BAIC to produce EVs in South Africa

China’s BAIC Group plans to produce about 100,000 electric vehicles annually in South Africa.

Its announcement at the Auto China 2018 Beijing motor show came as Nissan unveiled its first electric car designed for China while General Motors displayed a Buick SUV it says has a 600km range, the NZ Herald reports.

China accounted for half of last year’s global sales of electrics and Chinese sales of electrics and hybrids could top one million vehicles this year.

BAIC plans a “new energy car production base” in South Africa by the end of June, its chairman Xu Heyi says. It would have a 100,000 vehicles annual production capacity.

That would make BAIC the second Chinese company to produce EVs abroad, following BYD Auto, which makes battery-powered buses in a Californian factory.

“BAIC is going to become a leading domestic and world-class new energy car-manufacturing company,” Heyi says.

It makes a popular low-priced line of plug-in electrics and plans to increase total annual sales of electrified models to 1.5 million by 2025, he says.

In April 2017, BAIC announced its entry to the South African motor vehicle market with a NZ$2.25 billion investment in a vehicle manufacturing plant in Port Elizabeth.