Chinese electric carmaker BYD announced on Tuesday that it will invest $620 million to build a new electric vehicle industrial complex in Brazil, a dramatic expansion of its operations in Latin America.

The plant, which will be the Shenzhen-based company’s first electric vehicle plant outside Asia, is expected to begin operations in the second half of 2024. According to BYD, the plant is part of its “ambitious” energy transition mission” towards an “irreversible green revolution.”

BYD’s plans call for the construction of a three-plant complex to be built in Brazil’s Camaçari industrial park, located in the northeastern state of Bahia. 

The complex will be reportedly built on land previously occupied by American carmaker Ford until 2021, when Ford’s manufacturing operations ceased in Brazil after more than a century in the country.

The company stated that one of the plants will produce chassis for electric buses and trucks. The second plant will produce hybrid and electric automobiles, aiming to achieve an estimated capacity of 150,000 units per year in its first phase. The third unit will be focused on lithium and iron phosphate processing, both indispensable materials used in electric vehicle batteries. The third plant will, according to BYD, “serve the global market” and use the existing port infrastructure at the location.

“This is an extremely important moment for BYD in the Americas,” BYD global vice-president Stella Li said in the announcement. “These new factories in Bahia will bring innovation and the highest standards in technology, this will allow the introduction and acceleration of electromobility in the country, a key movement to combat climate change and really improve people’s quality of life.”

The company claimed that the factories are expected to generate more than 5,000 jobs over the next several years.

“The social contribution will be significant. We want to hire local labor starting this year so that they can begin receiving all the necessary training and knowledge transfer,” Tyler Li, President of BYD Brazil said. “At BYD, we are strongly committed to contributing and generating value for Brazilians.”

The announcement is a result of talks between Brazilian government officials and BYD representatives that took place in April during the official visit of radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to China, where he reportedly met with the executives prior to his meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

Lula signed 15 agreements with Xi during his visit as part of the Brazilian President’s efforts to deepen its nation’s ties with the Chinese Communist Party’s regime.

“This is a country we trust and this is a government we trust,” Li said in an interview in São Paulo. “I see a China-Brazil win-win position to build up a top level, very friendly relationship. And this is making a huge difference.”

BYD’s electric vehicle plant announcement is the latest in a series of actions that the Chinese company has undertaken to further expand its presence in Latin America. In 2020, the company opened an electric bus battery factory in Manaus, northwest Brazil, and has been producing electric bus chassis in Campinas since 2018.

On Monday, BYD announced that it will also deploy an engineering team to Chile as part of the company’s $290 million project to begin processing lithium in Chile after Chilean authorities designated the company a “specialized lithium producer” in April, which allows it to get access to lithium carbonate at preferential prices.

BYD’s April announcement came hours before Chilean far-left President Gabriel Boric launched his administration’s plans to nationalize the country’s lithium industry, which will reduce Chinese pressure on the nation over its lithium reserves. The Chilean government will retain majority state control and participation in any and all prospective lithium mining partnership agreements in the future.

In 2022, BYD was granted a 20-year contract by the administration of “center-right” President Sebastián Piñera to extract up to 80,000 tons of Chilean lithium per year in the Copiapo region. The contract was suspended hours later by order of a Chilean appeals court after local indigenous communities filed an appeal.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.