BYD Blade Battery to Enter India in Partnership With Toyota
Cailian Press reported on Tuesday that BYD’s FinDreams Battery, the production base for the company’s blade battery, is recruiting overseas market personnel, including customs and logistics workers who are familiar with the import and export policies of the Indian market. Regarding whether the FinDreams Battery will enter the Indian market, the relevant BYD employee refused to comment.
However, another piece of news seems very consistent with that plan. As recruitment for the FinDreams Battery carries on, the Indian magazine Autocar Online reported on February 10 that Toyota will cooperate with Maruti Suzuki to jointly explore the electric vehicle (EV) market in India. The first EV is a medium-sized SUV with the code name YY8.
In addition, the two sides will develop at least five products based on the 27PL platform, which has been derived from the 40PL Skateboard platform. These models are expected to be equipped with BYD’s “blade battery.”
Toyota and Maruti Suzuki hope to jointly sell 125,000 EVs every year, including 60,000 in India. According to local media reports in India, Maruti Suzuki hopes that the price of its pure electric SUVs will be controlled between 1.3 million and 1.5 million rupees (about $17,412 to $20,090).
The cooperation between Toyota and BYD began a while ago. In March 2020, BYD Toyota EV Technology Co., Ltd., headquartered in Shenzhen, was formally established. According to the plan, Toyota will launch a pure electric small car based on the BYD E3.0 platform and equipped with a “blade battery” for the Chinese market at the end of this year, and the price may be less than 200,000 yuan ($31,543).
In addition, BYD has long coveted the Indian market, an emerging EV hub. As early as 2013, the BYD K9 became the first pure electric bus in India. In 2019, BYD received an order for 1,000 pure electric buses in India.
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At the beginning of February this year, BYD officially delivered the first batch of 30 E6s in India. The price of the car in India is 2.96 million rupees, mainly used for ride-hailing business. BYD India has designated six distributors in eight cities and started selling to business customers. When promoting E6, BYD India highlighted its blade batteries.
In fact, the Indian government pays special attention to the promotion of new energy vehicles. In 2017, the Indian government said that the country would stop selling fuel-based vehicles in 2030 to fully adopt electrification measures. In order to promote the development of the new energy vehicle industry in India, the government plans to invest 260 billion rupees in the next five years to provide subsidies for enterprises producing new energy vehicles.
