Manufacturers like BYD, Tesla and Li Auto are cutting prices to move their electric cars. For gasoline-powered vehicles, the surplus of factories is e

‘It Is Desolate’: China’s Glut of Unused Car Factories

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2024-04-24 02:00:08

Manufacturers like BYD, Tesla and Li Auto are cutting prices to move their electric cars. For gasoline-powered vehicles, the surplus of factories is even worse.

On the outskirts of Chongqing, western China’s largest city, sits a huge symbol of the country’s glut of car factories. It’s a complex of gray buildings, nearly a square mile in size. The thousands of employees who used to work there have moved on. Its crimson loading docks are closed.

The facility, a former assembly plant and engine factory, had been a joint venture of a Chinese company and Hyundai, the South Korean giant. The complex opened in 2017 with robots and other equipment to make gasoline-powered cars. Hyundai sold the campus late last year for a fraction of the $1.1 billion it took to build and equip it. Unmown grass at the site has already grown knee high.

“It was all highly automated, but now, it is desolate,” said Zhou Zhehui, 24, who works for a rival Chinese automaker, Chang’an, and whose apartment looks down on the former Hyundai complex.