BEIJING, July 14 (TMTPost)— BYD Co., a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker backed by legendary billionaire investor Warren Buffett for more than a decade, is ramping up overseas capacity expansion while raking in despite ongoing price war.

Credit：Visual China

BYD has applied for an investment of US$1 billion to set up an EV joint venture with Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited, a multi-sector infrastructure company based in Hyderabad, the capital of southern India's Telangana state, Reuters reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter on Friday. While not revealing how Indian regulators’ viewed BYD’s proposal, pending regulatory approval, the report noted New Delhi has tightened regulation on investments from neighboring countries in 2020. BYD’s domestic peer Great Wall Motor was said earlier this month to shelf its plan to invest US$1 billion in India due to the stricter rules.

If Indian government gives BYD the green light, China’s No. 1 EV maker would have its second vehicle production base in India. BYD began to produce electric buses in 2013 through Olectra Greentech, a local manufacturer cofounded with Megha Engineering.

BYD didn’t comment on the report yet. In the preliminary financial results released Friday, the automaker showed robust growth for the first half of 2023. BYD estimated a net income range between RMB10.5 billion and RMB11.7 billion from January to June, surging 192.05% and 225.43% from a year ago.

Thanks to the improving brand power, the increasing advantage of large scale, and the powerful cost control across the industry chain, BYD maintained good profitability despite increasing competition in the auto industry, the company said in a filing on Friday. It noted the strong growth of new energy vehicles were achieved even compared with a large volume of sales in the same period last year. With increasing market share, BYD continued to consolidate its leadership in new energy vehicle (NEV), the sector including the battery electric vehicle (BEV) and the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV),in the first half of year.

BYD announced in the start of this month that it sold 250,300 NEVs in June, suggesting an 88.79% year-over-year (YoY) increase. The EV giant for the first time sold more than 250,000 units in a month, a new record for the second consecutive month. Sales in the quarter ended June also set a record of more than 700,000 units, almost doubling a year earlier. The company sold over 1.25 million NEVs in the first half of the year, accounting for about two thirds of sales last year.

The reported Indian venture highlighted BYD’s effort for deepening global presence. Last week, BYD unveiled its first manufacturing expansion in Latin America in about eight years. It signed an agreement to start operations in three factories simultaneously in the Camaçari complex, 50km from Salvador, the capital of Brazil’s northeastern state of Bahia. Calling the new move “a historic landmark in the Brazilian automotive industry”, BYD said it will invest in more than 3 billion Brazilian reals (US$620 million).

The announcement marks BYD’s first EV manufacturing hub outside Asia to be born. The hub involves an industrial complex consisting of three manufacturing units. One dedicated to the production of chassis for electric buses and trucks. The other will produce hybrid and electric automobiles, with an estimated capacity of 150,000 units per year in the first phase. The third unit, focused on lithium and iron phosphate processing, will serve the global market, utilizing the existing port infrastructure at the location.