A two -hour guide beyond the traffic jams of San Paolo, beyond the vast valleys of Sugar Bane, one of the first Chinese food car factories in the Americas is preparing to open.Its goal is to reinvent the way Brazil guides and, ultimately, the rest of Latin America, just as Chinese car manufacturers have already done largely of Asia and want to do in Europe.
Until recently, this factory was managed by Mercedes-Benz, the German giant of the 20th century car innovation that churned out the cars fed by petrol. Today it is owned by Great Wall Motor, a company that is now one of the main Chinese exporters of elegant and economic electric vehicles.
The change in the hands reflects a profound interruption for one of the most vital industries in the world. If the cars that guide American and European gas once they dominated the tastes and global tendencies, that era seems to be quickly addressing China.
Today, not only China produces and exports more cars of all kinds than any other country in the world, Chinese companies dominate the global production of battery -powered vehicles of the future. They also check the supply chain practically for everything that goes into those cars.
Chinese EVs are among the most advanced in the world. Some today reach up to a single charge as top of the range Teslas, at lower prices. A Chinese car manufacturer, Byd, abbreviation of Build Your Dreams, has developed a technology capable of offering a complete charge in just five minutes.It is not surprising that Tesla’s sales in China are late and that the United States, under both presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have essentially prohibited the imports of Chinese cars.
For China, this leaves the rest of the world.
His electrical and hybrid producers have created or are about to create factories in Hungary, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and Türkiye. These efforts, including the Brazilian factory of Great Wall, are part of a campaign that swept away China to seize an important share of the world car industry, a powerful source of revenue, jobs and even national prestige.
Western car giants are alarmed.
“We are in a global competition with China,” said Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor Co., at the Aspen Ideas conference in June. “They are not just electric vehicles. And if we lose this, we don’t have a future for Ford.”
Great Wall Motor detected the Mercedes plant in the industrial city of Iracemápolis, near San Paolo, after the German car manufacturer closed the shop in 2021, blaming a collapse of luxury cars sales. Byd has taken on an Ford factory after years of poor sales and steep losses forced the US car giant to end its long production history in Brazil.
Farley at the time called the closures “difficult but necessary actions”. Ford had assembled car in Brazil for a century, starting from the T.
“For the first time for decades, we have been witnessing a real challenge to the domination of American and European brands, not only in terms of market share, but in modeling the future of mobility,” said Natalie Untorstell, president of an organization for climate research and defense called Talanoa Institute, based in Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil, the sixth automotive market in the world, is trying to take advantage of it, instead of being rolled steam. These are the companies that pushed, regardless of where they come from, to make cars on the Brazilian soil, less polluting, the better, also imposing rates in constant increase in imports.
It wasn’t all smooth. There have been union clashes on Chinese work practices. But the general message of the government: if you want to access our car buyers, come and create factory factories and work here.
“We do not want to be an importer of technologies produced only in other countries,” said Rafael Dubeux, special consultant of the Ministry of Finance, in an interview in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia. “We also want to take advantage of this profound change in the world, in manufacturing structures, so that Brazil also has a part in the value chains that we believe are the ones that will prevail”.
At least three Chinese companies are opening up assembly systems in Brazil. In addition to Great Wall Motor and Byd, another Chinese car manufacturer, Chery, has collaborated with a Brazilian company, Caoa, to produce cars in the central Goias state.
However, Marcio Lima Leite, head of the Brazil Auto Association, remains worried. The new Chinese car systems are mainly assembling cars with components imported from China, including the most precious component, the batteries. This, he said, will not advance the industry in Brazil.
“It is very important to have competitiveness in Brazil, produce new technology in Brazil,” he said.
Chinese car manufacturers had to bend to local needs in important ways. In Brazil, this means the needs of the powerful Aannerol industry. Ethanol is produced by the enormous culture of country sugar cane and the Brazilian law requires that every liter of petrol is just over 25% of ethanol.
So the car companies are not just making fully electric cars in Brazil. They must also create hybrids that run in part on the mix of gas-eThanol and partly on the batteries. “We have to produce what customers are looking for,” said Marcio Renato Alfonso, a Brazilian who has worked for an American car manufacturer for many years and is now director of the research and development of Great Wall for Brazil. “High technology with an affordable price.”
Along Henry Ford Avenue in the industrial city of Camaçari, what was once a Ford Factory is becoming an byd factory.
This had been the most recent Ford plant. Every day, starting from 2001, hundreds of gas cars had churned out. It took about 5,000 workers. He also lost huge quantities of money.
In 2021, the Ford plant closed.
“It was a shock,” said Júlio Bonfim, who was president of the union of metal workers in the factory. “I imagined that my son also worked on the plant. It didn’t happen.”
The state government offered Byd a basket of incentives to take the plant. But as soon as the Chinese company arrived, it was wrapped in a work scandal.
In December, Brazilian officials accused by by Byd, Jinjiang Construction Group, of maintaining 163 Chinese workers in “Schiavitu conditions like” and in violation of Brazilian labor laws. He embodied the rendering of the accounts that Chinese companies face while trying to expand to Brazil, which has solid unions.
The workers were postponed home. The construction slowed down. Company officials said they were expecting to start production by the end of the year. When it does so, Bonfim’s union insists that the Brazilians must be hired to work on the line. He threatened to hit if Chinese workers are introduced.
The best manager of Byd for Brazil, Alexandre Baldy, said that the company took measures to face violations. In May, the Labor Prosecutor’s Office presented accusations against the car manufacturer and its contractors for the section of human beings. The company has declared that it plans to contest the accusations.
Meanwhile, the Great Wall Factory of Iracemápolis will be almost already fully operational. An opening ceremony is scheduled for August. The cars will have to roll from the factory floor immediately after.
The factory includes the first scheduled to produce a hybrid model and three plug-in hybrids.
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