- Nio will reportedly submit an official offer for Audi's Brussels plant on September 23.
- The factory currently only builds the Q8 E-Tron and Audi has no plans to produce anything else there.
The European Union will adopt new import duties for cars manufactured in China, and several Chinese manufacturers have announced their interest in building cars in the EU. Nio, reportedly seeking to take over Audi's manufacturing plant in Belgium, is the latest addition to this list.
According to Belgian publication De Tijd, Nio will submit an official offer to purchase the plant by September 23. It intends to utilize the entire factory for car assembly in Europe, thus avoiding the newly imposed import duties on China-made cars, which is added on top of the existing 10% tariff.
Audi, which hasn't been doing so great lately, is actively seeking a buyer for the plant, having sent its nearly 3,000-strong workforce home without pay after they refused to return to work due to demands for higher salaries and assurances of future job security. Things escalated to the point where workers gathered outside the plant in protest and set piles of tires on fire to attract attention.
Before the news that Nio was interested in buying the plant broke, local Belgian media reports were convinced the factory’s fate was already sealed after Audi parent Volkswagen announced it had no plans to make new models there.
The automaker is currently building the Q8 E-Tron in Brussels, but the model isn’t selling anywhere near as well as Audi hoped, and it’s considering ending its production early. Furthermore, the electric Q8’s replacement will not be manufactured in Belgium (production will be moved to Mexico and China), and Audi no longer sees a use for this particular manufacturing location.
Nio is aware of this, and it will leverage the information to get a good deal on the factory, which would allow it to greatly expand its presence across the continent. Its previous interaction with Audi wasn’t a positive one, though, as the German automaker took Nio to court in Germany (and won) over its ES6, ES7 and ES8 model names, which sounded too similar to S6 and S7.
Nio isn’t the only Chinese automaker looking to build cars in Europe for local markets. BYD is already building its first car plant in Europe near Szeged in Hungary, which will have a capacity of 300,000 cars per year, and it’s eyeing locations for a second factory.
SAIC Motor is another big Chinese name looking to build cars in Europe. According to reports, it has already chosen a location in the Galicia region of Spain, but it is also considering Hungary or Czechia due to their lower labor costs. The plant would build MG-badged vehicles like the MG4.
China's Chery has already signed a deal with Ebro EV-Motors, a company based near Barcelona, to manufacture Omoda EVs in the region. Its goal is to produce 150,000 EVs per year there by 2029. Leapmotor has also gone down the joint venture path, and it’s partnered with Stellantis to build its tiny T03 city EV in Poland alongside Jeep and Fiat models.
