Beijing (ZXZC)- Starting December 23rd, the capital of Shaanxi Province, Xi’an initiated locked down due to the sudden COVID outburst in the city. With Xi’an being a significant manufacturing base to BYD, the automaker is bound to take a hit in production.  

Qin Plus DM-i; photo credit: BYD

BYD told a local media outlet that its Xi’an plant is affected by the outbreak, and the company is actively dealing with the matter.

BYD settled in the high-tech district of Xi’an in 2003 after it acquired Qinchuan Automobile. In the past two decades, BYD has gradually turned its Xi’an plant into a comprehensive production base of great importance within the company.

The Xi’an base takes on the responsibility of various business segments, including passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, electronics, automobile finance, rail transportation, and battery cells.

In the passenger vehicle segment, the phase I of BYD Xi’an new energy vehicle base project has realized production in September 2014, with a 300,000-vehicle annual production capacity. In January 2018, BYD invested RMB2 billion to break grounds for phase II of the project, which offers a designed production capacity of another 300,000 vehicles.

Earlier this year, a part of the phase II manufacturing project was put to use, making the total production capacity of the Xi’an plant around 400,000- 500,000 vehicles annually.

Notably, multiple popular BYD models are produced in this plant, including Qin and Song DM-i.

As to the commercial vehicle segment, BYD started building its battery-electric bus manufacturing base in the Xi’an new energy plant in January 2017. The base has a projected production capacity of 5,000 vehicles yearly.

Notably, the Department of Commerce of Shaanxi Province records showed that BYD’s Xi’an base produced 55,000 vehicles in November this year. If compared to the automaker’s total production volume of 99,753 vehicles in the same month, the Xi’an base accounted for more than half of the company’s entire production.