Fields of vines, olive and fig trees, wild grasses everywhere. It is hard to imagine that this land pampered by the Mediterranean sun is preparing to host one of the largest electric car factories in the world, its steel and metal production lines, robots and machines capable of producing 150,000 vehicles a year.
It is here, on this vast land of 100 hectares, where the first concrete slab of the Chinese factory of the car manufacturer BYD, the world’s first manufacturer in the electric segment, was built, the same one that dethroned Elon Musk and his Tesla in 2023 – will be installed in just a few months. Here, in this lost and green suburb of Manisa, a banal and dull city in western Turkey of barely 400,000 inhabitants, half agricultural, half industrial, discreet railway junction and road axis located less than half an hour by car from Izmir, the third city. and second port in the country. A place for which the initial investment planned by the Chinese giant amounts to one billion dollars (about 902 million euros).
This shows that the announcement of the project this summer caused a state of excitement among Turkish local and national authorities. Broadcast live by the country’s main media outlets, the signing ceremony brought together in Istanbul on July 8, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Minister of Industry and Technology, Mehmet Fatih Kacir, and the creator and CEO of BYD, billionaire Wang Chuanfu. The latter announced its intention to impose an accelerated schedule, aiming to complete factory construction by the end of 2025 and deploy the first vehicles by mid-2026.
Draconian import conditions
Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacir stated after the ceremony that “This investment in the production of high value-added vehicles will strengthen [l’]automotive industry [du pays] »rejoicing in the allure of a Türkiye destined to become “a center for foreign investment and also a center for innovation and cutting-edge green technologies”. Just a week later, during his visit to the Manisa site, he added: “This historic project in terms of scale and quality will produce electric vehicles in Türkiye and export them to global markets, particularly in Europe. »
It’s all said, or almost. So here is the imposing BYD at the doors of the European automobile market with a megaproject and the Turkish blessing, after the announcement of a first factory in Hungary. A unique opportunity at a time when the tariff war between China and its partners has never weighed so heavily on global trade. Thus, in May, Washington quadrupled its tariffs on electric vehicles (EV) made in China, now subject to 100% customs duties.
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