BYD is playing big. UEFA has just announced that the Chinese carmaker is going to be the official E-Mobility Partner of the EURO 2024 championship, which starts in June. Three-time winners will host the 17th UEFA European Championship this year.
BYD is the world’s largest NEV (new energy vehicle) maker. Furthermore, it surpassed Tesla in the fourth quarter of 2023 and crowned itself as the largest EV manufacturer in the world. Thus, UEFA seems to have chosen a reliable partner.
Volkswagen was UEFA’s mobility partner between 2018 and 2023, including Euro 2020. In September 2023, they announced they would not extend a deal covering UEFA’s national team competitions for cost discipline reasons, pulling out of the European tournament.
The tournament starts on June 14 with the home favourite Germany battling Scotland in Group A, at the Munich Football Arena, a stadium which sports a capacity of up 66,000 people. The final is set to take place at the Olympiastadion in Berlin on July 14, in front of 71,000 spectators.
During a whole month of soccer, BYD is going to provide a wide range of new energy vehicles for the transportation of the participants in all of the ten cities that have been selected to host soccer matches.
Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Hamburg are some of the cities that will be welcoming fans from all across Europe this summer.
Furthermore, they will be able to showcase their latest models at selected UEFA events. The exact list of models has not yet been announced. But we do expect models that are already selling or will sell on the European market.
The luxury YangWang U8 might be part of the Euro 2024 lineup. The SUV is able to perform the tank turn and has an emergency floating mode that prevents the car from sinking for approximately 30 minutes. Hopefully, it won’t need to float in Germany this upcoming summer.
BYD will also set up official fan zones for those who could not buy tickets to watch the game live at the stadium. There will be, according to the automaker, hundreds of such events inmate than 230 BYD stores across 19 European countries. The Chinese carmaker thus joins an exclusive list of official sponsors for the tournament. However, it is the only car brand to be involved in the European championship.
The Chinese are planning the construction of an EV factory in Szeged, Hungary, as the company’s plan to conquer Europe. It will be their first plant on the Old Continent.
