BYD is open to building cars in Canada and acquiring a rival automaker

BYD’s Executive Vice President Stella Li confirmed the world’s largest EV maker is studying the Canadian market for a wholly owned manufacturing plant, and signaled it could acquire a struggling legacy automaker to accelerate its global expansion.

The comments, made during an interview in São Paulo, mark BYD’s most aggressive public posture yet toward North American production and consolidation of weaker rivals in the global auto industry.

BYD wants full control — no joint ventures

Canada has been actively courting Chinese automakers to invest in local production, pushing them toward joint ventures with Canadian companies. BYD isn’t interested in that arrangement.

“I don’t think a JV will work,” Li told Bloomberg, adding that BYD would insist on owning and operating any Canadian facility outright. The company’s preference for vertical integration — it manufactures its own batteries, motors, power electronics, and semiconductors — makes shared ownership a poor fit for its operating model.

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The timing makes sense. In January, Canada agreed to slash its 100% tariff on Chinese EVs down to 6.1% permitting up to 49,000 Chinese-built vehicles annually. That quota is set to grow to around 70,000 over five years, with more than half expected to be affordable models priced under $35,000.

That tariff deal fundamentally changed the math for BYD. The company had shelved its Canadian market entry plans in late 2024 after Ottawa imposed the original 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. Now, with the door reopened, BYD is looking beyond simple imports toward local production.

Open to acquiring a legacy automaker

Perhaps more striking than the Canada factory talk is Li’s candid acknowledgment that BYD is evaluating potential acquisitions of established automakers. Several American, European, and Japanese manufacturers are struggling under the financial strain of maintaining both combustion and electric vehicle product lines simultaneously.

“We’re open to every opportunity we have,” Li said, noting that while no deal is imminent, BYD is actively evaluating assets. She didn’t name specific targets.

The playbook has a precedent. China’s Geely acquired Volvo Cars from Ford more than a decade ago and transformed it into a profitable, electrification-focused brand. BYD, with over 2.25 million battery-electric vehicles sold in 2025, surpassing Tesla’s 1.63 million, has the scale and cash flow to attempt something similar.

BYD is already one of three finalists bidding for the 230,000-unit Nissan-Mercedes COMPAS plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, alongside Geely and VinFast. Buying existing production capacity with trained workforces is faster and cheaper than building greenfield — and BYD appears to be applying the same logic globally.

1.3 million export target despite early sales slump

BYD’s overall sales for the first two months of 2026 fell 36% to 400,241 units. But exports gained momentum, and the company is targeting 1.3 million overseas vehicle sales for the full year. Li said BYD’s recently launched next-generation Blade Battery and ultra-fast flash charging architecture, capable of delivering up to 1,500 kW, will help reverse the domestic sales dip.

The company’s international expansion is accelerating on multiple fronts. BYD is ramping up its first European passenger vehicle factory in Hungary, weighing a second facility in Turkey, and already commands roughly 70% of Mexico’s EV and PHEV market. Li also confirmed BYD is exploring a Formula 1 entry to boost global brand recognition, though no decision has been finalized.

The one major market BYD is avoiding: the United States. Li called it a “complicated environment,” pointing to tariffs exceeding 100% on Chinese-made EVs and a ban on connected car technology that effectively bars Chinese mass-market vehicles from the American market.

Canada is the backdoor to North America

BYD’s interest in Canada isn’t happening in isolation. Chinese automakers Geely and Chery are also reportedly working to enter the Canadian market by late 2026, with discussions brokered between those companies and Canadian dealers. Canada is emerging as the path of least resistance for Chinese automakers to establish a North American footprint.

That said, BYD’s track record in Canada isn’t spotless. The company opened an electric bus assembly plant in Newmarket, Ontario, in 2019 with plans to supply the Toronto Transit Commission. The facility produced a grand total of 10 buses before closing, plagued by quality issues and political tensions between Ottawa and Beijing.

A passenger vehicle factory would be an entirely different scale of commitment — and BYD in 2026 is a fundamentally different company than the one that stumbled with buses in 2019.

Electrek’s Take

BYD’s willingness to go it alone in Canada, rejecting joint ventures in favor of full ownership, tells you everything about where this company sees itself. It is likely the most vertically-integrated automaker in the world. It literally produces everything that goes into its vehicles except for tires and glass.

It doesn’t need a local partner’s expertise or distribution network. It builds its own batteries, its own motors, its own semiconductors. What it needs is market access, and Canada just provided it.

The acquisition talk is the bigger story here. Legacy automakers from Detroit to Tokyo are hemorrhaging cash trying to compete in both combustion and electric simultaneously. Some of them won’t survive the transition. BYD, sitting on dominant EV technology and massive manufacturing scale, is positioning itself as the buyer of last resort, the same role Geely played when it rescued Volvo from Ford.

We’ve been tracking BYD’s methodical global expansion for years now, from its dominance in Mexico to the Hungary factory to the Nissan-Mercedes plant bid. Things are moving. Canada is the latest front, and it won’t be the last.