BYD in a recent regulatory filing is seen to be planning a 35.6 million square feet global research and development center in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, where the auto giant is headquartered, as part of the company’s latest push to drive tech innovation.
The facility is to be located about eight kilometers (five miles) north of its headquarters in the city’s Pingshan district, covering an area of 3.3 million square meters (35.6 million square feet). It will comprise nine buildings and include parking space for 20,000 cars and 8,054 non-motorized vehicles, according to a filing published by the Shenzhen Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau on Sept. 4.
The disclosure was revealed a year after China’s top electric vehicle maker announced the construction of its global R&D center, which will cost RMB 20 billion ($2.8 billion) and house 60,000 engineers, the city government said in a statement last June. The center will also include more than 50 research labs for emerging technologies such as nanoscale photonic physics and the development of high polymer materials.
BYD has been ramping up its R&D efforts to beef up its technology offerings over recent years and has pledged to invest RMB 100 billion in vehicle automation technologies over the long term. It expanded its software engineering team by more than 4,000 employees last May, according to senior vice president Stella Li, and over 80% of the 31,800 fresh graduates recruited last year have worked on R&D projects, TechNode reported.
The company announced on Friday that it now has the largest R&D team in the industry, as nearly 110,000 out of its approximately 900,000 employees are scientists and engineers, Li Yunfei, a general manager for branding and public relations, said on microblogging platform Weibo. Year-to-date sales of its passenger EVs, including all-electrics and plug-in hybrids, grew 29.4% year-on-year to 2.3 million units as of August.
READ MORE: BYD begins building a $2.9 billion industrial facility in Shenzhen
