China’s BYD Open to Building Cars in Canada, Buying Out Rivals

Company said it is looking at building a new plant or taking one over: >The Shenzhen-based automaker is studying the Canadian market for a potential manufacturing facility, although no decision has been made, Executive Vice President Stella Li said in an interview, adding that BYD would want to own and operate such a factory. >Li also signaled BYD may be interested in taking over a legacy carmaker at a time when some American, European and Japanese rivals are struggling to stay competitive in global markets — stretched by investments in their gas-only and electric vehicle operations. BYD has grown to prominence by producing both all-electric and hybrid gas-electric vehicles.

Aren’t their plants (or most of them) pretty much all automated? Would something like this make/maintain jobs or lose jobs?

Assembly lines have a lot of automation yes, but also a lot of workers to maintain the robots and to perform a lot of the manual tasks that the robots still cant.

I mean, this is exactly what Europe is requiring of them, so why wouldnt we want the same?

Compared to a closed legacy factory, I would think there will be an increase in jobs…🤷‍♂️

Ingersoll, Brampton… Windsor

Jobs for the sake of Jobs is one of the worst ways to keep an economy going. The more you produce inside the boundary of a country, the better is your lifestyle in the long term. It doesn't matter whether the factory is mostly automated, or manual.

It would lose jobs but that is necessary and a good thing. We cannot protect failing domestic businesses and union bloat.

Not in the traditional sense, there would be fewer assembly line jobs but lot of these would be replaced with automation engineering related jobs.

Yes bring it on please. American car companies can get stuffed.

If they replaced an existing factory with their more automated lines they'd probably cut like 25-50% of the jobs, but they'd be largely unskilled repetitive tasks. And there would be many more jobs for maintenance/technical support. In China BYD still has hundreds of thousands of employees.

Automated to a point yes. It’s still difficult for robots to do all jobs. Things that are easily repeatable like welding is pretty much 100% automated across the industry. Things like putting the weather stripping inside the door frame are generally done manually.

The only way I could do that was if you had to do a lot more work and and then you would be done by then I don’t think I could handle it anymore but you could just take a day or so off of that if I need it I would be able I just need it to get yto I just need a lot more money and then I’ll get a lot of work done

Right now those factory’s are supplying 0 jobs - so if they took one over and even employed 200 people it’s a net positive.

I am not going witieiyieitir for this yyyyyyyy I the k is a very bad

Awesome news 👍

I think its fair if our government hold a share of BYD Canada and has access to the intellectual property the CCP demands of corps doing business in China.

Didn't Stellantis or some other manufacturer effectively abandon everything like a month ago?

I’d love to see both this and a “dark factory” from South Korea as well building Hyundai

Ya. Me too. Carneys good at horse trading so I’d be disappointed if we did t get the same back.

You’re correct. Countries should accept that 1) you advance with the opportunities and grow at the cost of people losing jobs or 2) you keep people’s jobs that are obsolete and stagnant your growth. 2 is worse because there will be a talent drain and you’re left with the suckas

Less USA brands the better.

You still probably end up with a somewhat domestic supply chain to support the manufacturing process, so still overall beneficial but you're right in that it's not as beneficial as it was 50 years ago to manufacture cars locally

I would take BDY if they only employed 5 people over stagnant factories even if they supplied 1000s of jobs lol.

Are we supposed to resist automation in the name of having more manual labour?

Come and build charging infrastructure please

Get ready for the Americans to start crying.

Do it, it gives us more leverage if we have both China and the USA as options.

I hope they avoid Ontario for their own sake. Dough Ford has a hatred for anything good

Two thumps up.

I agree, yet somehow people feel differently about AI and its potential opportunity. I guess it a different group of people at risk now.

If it’s at a size/scale of any of the auto plants we have here right now. Even with the high level of automation you’re looking at a few thousand jobs, decent paying ones

Why the hell not? iPhone’s and Nike’s have been assembled by slaves for years. Let’s not pretend we have values above consumerism.

I imagine Windsor, so much auto talent there, plus cheaper land. Software can be made anywhere.

How does BYD tolerate unions?

Yeah they sold off their stake of the battery plant to LG (was a partnership). LG then decided to pivot from EV batteries to energy storage devices, EV aren’t the only market for battery tech lol. So positive outcome there, the factory will live on, 1300 jobs

Yes! Bring on the American century of humiliation

Keep a close eye on BYD so they don't pull what they did in Brazil. When building a plant, BYD used Chinese labor and kept them in bad conditions. [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v5n7w55kpo](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3v5n7w55kpo)

Now we're talkin'.

Well, the actual people he works for have the hatred/seek to not lose money

Those requirements have been repealed since 2020. You dont have to share intellectual property with the CCP anymore (apart from arms industries)

Volkswagen ran a literal slave farm in Brazil in living memory so I think this is more a Brazil problem than a BYD problem.

Well I guess we could say they owe us for Nortel alone. I'm being sort of tongue in cheek..

If that's true, i guess even the Brazilians were abhorred by what they saw. The Brazilian authority busted BYD for the way they treated Chinese construction workers they imported.

Knew it, awesome Canada wins again.

Canada's relationship with the Yanks get worse and worse and the relationship with China gets better and better. Nothing wrong with that!

Canadians, this is a great opportunity and we shouldn't discard it. We have an history of being competitive with China as a proxy of the US. But we always should think on what is important for Canada and how to compete in this dog eat dog reality. Canada needs to activate again its industry, research and development and having as much as trade and industry partners is a blessing in this and future moments. I hope that others redditers have the same mindset as mine.

What’s a dark factory?

I'm assuming one that doesn't require light because all the work is done by automation.

Id love to see Ford replaced, both the company and the corporate lobbyist posing as a politician. Every Ford vehicle ive ever driven has been awful

Yall are luckier than we are in the states where we have to buy cars through dealerships but I think you guys can buy EV’s direct. If Xaomi comes to North America well it’s game over for everyone else… https://youtu.be/Mb6H7trzMfI?si=r9kznG2HyLTA0O_z

How are we letting china into the country like this. We should be moving away from Chinese garbage. We are going to lose everything manufactured in North America. They’re gonna build their cars with all robots and no unions so people can save a buck. It’s crazy what we are doing to ourselves.

China has a habit of transferring their own citizens to work the overseas factories.

My 2007 ranger is still going strong, but whenever it decides to be done i'd love to buy a BYD shark.

A factory that’s pretty much 100% automated so you don’t usually need to keep the lights on. Most of the jobs are in roboticist, electricians and electrical engineers, and maintenance. It allows you to pump out super cheap cars. We’d obviously want a 100% Canadian supply chain feeding it.

Dark factory is the highly automated factory that robots and intelligent systems handle production with little or no human involvement, allowing it to operate even without lighting.

As far as ive seen the older Ford vehicles are not nearly as bad. Ive driven multiple newer Fords (2016 onward probably) via Zipcar short term rentals, and they are really annoying to drive in my experience compared to any similar classed vehicles

Not able to read the article so apologies if this has already been said but, what’s the motivation for China to build here? Labor is more expensive, Americans won’t allow cars across the border. Who do they think they will export to?

Even if dark factories don’t create many direct jobs, they still bring a whole ecosystem with them, like robot design, maintenance, servicing, etc. Those are skilled jobs, and it could give Ontario universities more research opportunities. Automation is happening whether we like it or not, so burying our heads in the sand isn’t really a strategy.

Their factories are mostly automated and have very little human staff. There’s a 0% chance they’re taking over a legacy automaker - they’d gain almost nothing and would inherit a tonne of baggage. It MIGHT make sense to purchase a factory from a legacy automaker but even that has a very low probability of making sense vs just building their own.

Me too!

We already lost the majority of USA based auto plants , Canada only has 1 gm auto plant left in Oshawa , stellantis has 1 left in Windsor and the last ford plant is currently being retooled. Toyota & Honda have 4 plants in Canada.

This would be a huge win for us if it happens. BYD was probably market leader in the space right now.

We can thank trump for this!

It'll still need to be built to canadian standards. Can't speak for Brazilian standards tho.

Yeah, to access the Canadian car market they need to give us something in return.

So you're saying BYD folks should show up to a relation of Dog Ford's weddings with a bag of money?

We should build more Toyotas and Hondas here anyway. We should get cheaper non tariff Toyotas here and they should be bare bones. Are we forgetting how terrible china is for the environment and for human kind.

We can thank Carney for this.

If they’re built in Canada by Canadians, I’ll buy one.

Cami would make sense. Already has infrastructure for EVs, literally just sitting there rotting.

Because EU's auto market is simply way bigger than Canada's auto market. And if you take into consideration that a larger percentage of new car buyers in the EU that are buying EVs ([20% alone bought BEVs in January](https://cleantechnica.com/2026/03/02/100-electric-vehicles-20-of-new-car-sales-in-europe-in-january/), and that excludes PHEVs and EREVs), combined with a larger auto market in the EU already, that makes EU's EV market way, way, larger than Canada's EV market. Without the ability to sell cars to the US tariff free, Canada's auto market simply isn't a big market. Please refer to what happened in Australia - Australia tried to support their own domestic car production, but the market was so small, the government and ultimately taxpayers, ended up paying a lot of money to sustain the domestic car production in Australia until they couldn't anymore because it was a huge drain on taxpayer money. Without the ability to sell to the US market (or other large markets), it becomes much harder to turn a profit if automakers can only sell cars produced in Canada to the Canadian market only. Good on BYD for **considering** setting up a factory in Canada though, maybe they ran the numbers and determined they can make a profit just selling to the Canadian market (but I must stress "considering" because that's what the article says, it's not a done deal).

Not clear that you can build a plant to supply only Canada. I think BYD would only do it if they can also supply the US from that plant, which is highly uncertain right now. I don't think any of the current auto plants in Canada supply only Canada and not the US. You need scale to be competitive. You need to be able to sell to 400 million people not just 40 million.

>to access the Canadian car market they need to give us something in return Technically, China did, they lowered the tariffs on Canadian canola already, as part of the deal they made with Carney.

You're living in la la land if you think that vehicles produced in Canada with human labor are going to be cost competitive in the global market. It's why we've already lost so much to Mexico, and now even the US.

I know they are not. But outsourcing everything to china is why we are In this mess. We need to stay away from their products. Especially large electric data farming Chinese companies

I’d pay more if it was Canadian made but Canadian quality.

We need to build a society that can adapt to automation. It is inevitable. We need to teach kids trades but with hardware tech to be include in it.

Might be a 'something outside of Brazil bringing people in = bad' situation, the BMW and German ties to Brazil run deep IYKYK

Yet we turn a blind eye to everything else made in China , Walmart is Chinese everything that’s ok but Chinese cars are bad. People need to stop being hypocritical.

Trump won’t be forever. Do you think a democrat is going to block Canadian made cars from entering?

Yeah I know. And we did lower the Chinese EV tariffs, with a quota in return. So if they want to export more to Canada, we need more benefits. Just like how Carney is getting Hyundai submarine and Saab Grippen to be built in Canada. Win win.

Exactly. This is why I like to refer to the story of Australia. Australia's population is comparable to Canada. Unfortunately, Australia could not support their own domestic car manufacturing industry, they were bleeding a lot of taxpayer money to keep it afloat. Eventually, the Australian government said enough is enough, we can't subsidize the domestic auto manufacturers in Australia forever with tax payer money, and they pulled the plug. In general, auto manufacturers in Canada need to be able to sell cars to the US tariff free, to turn a profit.

I don’t shop at Walmart. People of Walmart is your deciding factor on what is hypocrisy? I thought we’re going towards farmers markets and locally grown food and being healthier. What’s hypocritical is we send our oil and bitumen to china, turning a blind eye to them just polluting and raping the oceans and also charging its own citizens carbon taxes??? How the f are we supposed to compete with these countries?

But as a company, you can't fork out a huge capital expenditure to build a factory, banking on a Democrat returning to the White House and dropping the tariffs on Canadian manufactured cars. And then what if the president in 2032 becomes Republican again and they put back the tariffs on Canadian manufactured cars? Companies will spend a lot of money to setup these factories. They are long term projects, and they expect long term stability, and long term profits. It's simply too much of a risk to spend all that money to setup a factory, banking on whether the next US president is Democrat or not.

Its what they required to enter China 30 years ago. Invite them in with joint ventures, allow companies to steal their IP, refuse to prosecute

Let's go! This is what we need!

I'd be shocked if they haven't already

that's where the auto industry is

This would depend on CUSMA surviving.

Canada is kowtowing to China so this is more of Canada's century of humiliation than anything else.

> Automation is happening whether we like it or not, so burying our heads in the sand isn’t really a strategy. Exactly. Car manufacturers are going to become more automated. We either get on the automation train so that we can stay competitive with other auto manufacturers, or give up any hope of being able to manufacture cars competitively.

Hell yeah if they are Chinese. Biden had already put in place tariffs on Chinese cars. The US would at best demand they be made in the US, just like they do with Japanese car makers.

I’d always been told that FORD stands for Found On Road Dead.

Building cars in Canada, yes. Buying out rivals, no.

Brazil has very strict labour laws (hence the factory raids). BYD just chose to ignore them.

There's too much baggage with the Western brands they could buy out. They should just come as their own brand.

They tolerate them but they are largely toothless

Only because of proximity to the US. If a new player were to come in they'd ve better off in AB or SK. Unless they have dreams of US expirts.

VW’s scandal happened 50 years ago under a military dictatorship. They were convicted in court. Their factories are unionized with better CBAs than their Spanish factories nowadays.   BYD brought in a bunch of migrants and tried to circumvent local laws.

Trade itself is a benefit, only Trump thinks you need to pay to access the market, it's just random bullying. What we need in exchange for lower trade barriers with anyone is simply.. lower trade barriers in return. That I agree with, as freer trade is a scenario where everyone wins. We should not demand more for access to our market than.. more access to their market. That's the win-win formula.

Not everything is a Nazi conspiracy.  Brazil has 12 million Germans thanks to massive immigration from Prussia and Rhineland 200 years ago.  They took in 50,000 refugees after WWII and just like in the other Allied countries a small number of war criminals hid among them. The VW farm was a business deal in the 1970s. The Brazilian military wanted the Amazon cleared and gave VW tax breaks and free land to do it. VW used the same brutal contractors that the other ranchers used at the time.

Reducing tariffs on canola oil is not a sufficient tradeoff for being able to access a massive automotive market, I’m sorry.

There is a limit to the amount of cars they can sell per year, its quite small actually. Do some additional reading.

> We should not demand more for access to our market than.. more access to their market. I agree. But we only have that much canola, oil and lobster to export.. and a lot of Canadians are against increasing oil production. So we gotta gain trade benefit in other ways.. job creation via foreign investment is one way.

It is irrelevant which party is in power. The foreign policy is the same.

There is a 49K quota on Chinese EVs in the first year. China doesn't have access to the entire Canadian market with that quota.

As it stands right now*

As it stands for right now* Which literature am I supposed to refer to that says that the current arrangement is what will continue to be going forward? Mind steering me in that direction?

Wasn't there a Canadian built car called Leaf a long time ago? What ever happened to that?

If the current arrangement changes, then I will change my mind. I can only come up with conclusions based on things that have happened, not change my opinion on something that may never happen.

They literally give us all our consumer goods. Canada doesn't have the upper hand here. If BYD can engineer an EV that's efficient in the cold they deserve access to the market.

I don’t draw any conclusions because I know that this world, especially economies and the political winds that affect them, are dynamic systems that are constantly evolving and changing.

Foreign investment worked for China. Maybe it would work for Canada as well.

Population density (workers and local customers) is much higher in Ontario. Supporting industries are all present in Ontario for building vehicles. Infrastructure is already present in Ontario for building vehicles. There are empty plant locations now that could be converted to new vehicle use. Ignoring the US, Ontario still makes sense.