BYD Builds Test Center in Shaoguan

BYD car company from China plans to built the country’s largest vehicle testing center. The project has no financial difficulties, as the company gets support from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who in 2008 was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of approximately $62 billion.

BYD Auto, which in December 2008 began selling the world's first mass-produced dual-mode plug-in hybrid vehicle, plans to produce affordable electric vehicles in the near future. Therefore the new center is aimed to enhance research capability and vehicle quality control for the Chinese car company.

Talking about location, BYD’s new center will be in Shaoguan, Guangdong province. Investors hope operations will begin before 2012. This new facility will also produce vehicle parts, as BYD makes all its vehicle parts except for the windscreen and tires.

BYD also has quality control systems at its manufacturing bases in Xi'an and Shenzhen, a vehicle crash testing lab in Shanghai and an R&D centre at its headquarters in Shenzhen. Aside from this, BYD is the first Chinese automaker to have its own circuit, a high-speed curved track in Shenzhen.

"BYD always attaches much attention and invests hugely in R&D and quality control as we believe the quality of our products is vital to our long-term development," said Xu An, BYD's public relations manager, as reported by just-auto.com. "We have seen beneficial results from insisting on quality control, especially in making the auto parts ourselves, during previous years."