Chinese electric car market leader BYD, perhaps best known to readers of our newsfeed as the company responsible for outfitting a variety of cities around the world with fleets of electric buses, is looking to distinguish itself from competitors. China has fast become the world’s pre-eminent market for green automotive tech, with hundreds of start-ups looking to take the lead. BYD, which is primarily known for its technological credentials, is looking to go one up on these companies with a new design hub that it hopes will give it an edge.
BYD’s share price has crept up by 1% over the past month
Source: Yahoo Finance
BYD has opened a “global design centre” at its Shenzhen headquarters, uniting 300 in-house designers and 100 external staffers in a 12,600 sq. meter space devoted to design. The centre contains an area dedicated to creating clay models of cars, and will also be used to apply design principles to other types of vehicles. Particularly, BYD plans to design monorails, which it hopes to see success with both in China and internationally.
In a statement released at the end of last month, BYD president and chairman Wang Chuanfu said: “Both technology and design must be grasped firmly, to transform BYD’s products from being solely powered by ‘technology’ to leveraging the combined power of ‘technology + design.”
BYD is China’s leading player in China’s electric car market. Last year, it sold more than 250,000 clean energy cars to Chinese drivers. But new players abound, and big names like Tesla are lining up alongside them to vie for BYD’s crown. Greater design capabilities are a necessary part of what could keep BYD out in front of these rivals.
Disclosure
Dominion holds BYD in its Global Trends Managed Fund.
Author: Theo Leworthy
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