Chinese car manufacturer Great Wall Motor (GWM) plans to open a plant in Brazil next year. The plant will manufacture electric cars only – in the form of battery electric cars, hybrids and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles. It will be GWM’s fourth-largest manufacturing site worldwide.
The site in Iracemápolis in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, which GWM purchased from Daimler in 2021, is scheduled to go into operation on 1 May 2024. It is said to have an annual capacity of 100,000 vehicles and to create about 2,400 new jobs.
“GWM’s Brazil plant will be the first NEV plant in Brazil to specialise in hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs),” says Brazil’s vice-president Geraldo Alckmin.
GWM will start modernising and expanding the plant before the end of the first half of 2023. GWM wants to invest around €1.83 billion in its operations in Brazil in the coming ten years.
The first vehicle to roll off the production line there is a “hybrid flex-fuel truck” called Poer – a plug-in hybrid that runs on ethanol. The latter is said to be the bridge to hydrogen technology. The company will also manufacture a still undisclosed SUV at the plant.
GWM plans to first serve the Brazilian market and export its EVs to other Latin American countries later. In Brazil, Great Wall Motors plans to launch four BEV models of its Ora brand and six hybrid models of the GWM brand in the next three years.
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Keyword: Great Wall Motors opens EV factory in Brazil