BYD is seeking permits to take its Camaçari plant to 600,000 vehicles a year, its Brazil chief told Reuters

BYD is seeking permits to double annual production capacity at its Brazilian plant to 600,000 vehicles, Reuters reported on 23 October 2026. The Reuters account carried by Investing.com says the company is nearing completion of its stamping, welding, and paint facilities. The source is an interview with Alexandre Baldy, senior vice president and BYD's top executive in Brazil. This desk did not find a BYD press release stating the permit request. The figures below are what Reuters says Baldy told it.

The plant is in Camaçari, in Bahia. Reuters says BYD opened it on 9 October 2025, on an industrial complex once owned by Ford, and that the opening was a year before this interview. Reuters describes Brazil as South America's largest car market. The factory currently employs about 9,000 people, Baldy said, and the company expects the workforce to grow to about 10,000 by the end of this year.

Local content is the condition Baldy tied to exports. He said the Brazil unit is on track to source more than 50 percent of its components locally, and that it is looking to exceed the required minimum as it enters 2027. "We are working to begin 2027 above this threshold ... so that we are officially recognized as a local producer," Baldy said. Reuters wrote that clearing that bar would satisfy the regulatory demand and help the plant begin regional exports.

Reuters also reported a complaint from outside the company. It wrote that local industry groups have complained that BYD relied on imports and on temporarily low tariffs. The story does not name the groups or quote them in that sentence, so the complaint stands as Reuters' report of what those groups have said, not as a finding by this desk.

On sales, Reuters said BYD wants to be Brazil's biggest automaker by volume by 2030. Baldy did not give a time frame for the capacity doubling. He told Reuters the plant is already seeing demand outstrip what it can build. BYD plans to reach a monthly output of 25,000 vehicles by the end of 2026, he said, and Reuters wrote that current demand is likely to keep topping supply. "Our demand has averaged around 30,000 cars per month, meaning we are missing out on roughly 5,000 to 6,000 additional invoiced sales," Baldy said.

Money already spent, and cars already billed, are separate from the permit. Baldy said investment in the plant has already passed the planned 5.5 billion reais. Reuters converted that at 5.04 reais to the dollar and printed $1.09 billion. He also said billings by the Brazil unit will this week hit 200,000 cars so far this year. "Billings" is his word for that running total. It is not the same series as registrations. Reuters, citing company data, said BYD had 22,209 vehicles registered in Brazil in September, equal to an 8.5 percent share. Reuters named Stellantis's Fiat, Volkswagen, and General Motors as the country's top sellers that month.

The export book, as Baldy described it to Reuters, is already partly spoken for. He said BYD is a market leader in Uruguay and that sales rank highly in Colombia and Argentina. Reuters reported that the Brazilian unit has received orders for 50,000 units each from Mexico and Argentina, and that it expects to start meeting those orders next year, once the local-component ratio is higher.

Analysis

A permit application is not finished capacity. Baldy did not give Reuters a date for the 600,000-vehicle figure. The 25,000-a-month output he described, for the end of 2026, is a nearer production target. Twelve times 25,000 is 300,000 vehicles a year. That product is this desk's arithmetic, not a capacity number BYD printed beside the permit request. Reuters described the permit step as a doubling, to 600,000. Nothing in the interview says the plant is building at the higher rate now.