BYD’s largest Chinese megafactory dwarfs Tesla’s Austin site. Satellite images show it’s getting even bigger.

• Satellite imagery shows how BYD is expanding its largest megafactory in Zhengzhou, China.

• The factory appears to have doubled in size, and BYD has added a racing circuit with a wade pool.

• BYD is on track to overtake Tesla as the world’s largest EV company this year, despite a recent sales slowdown.

BYD has a simple strategy when it comes to taking on Tesla: build, build, build.

The Chinese EV giant is constructing factories and stores around the world as it takes on Elon Musk’s automaker, and satellite images obtained by Business Insider show how it has significantly expanded one of its largest production facilities in China.

BYD broke ground on the mammoth Zhengzhou factory in late 2021, with production beginning in April 2023.

Since then, Zhengzhou has quickly become one of the EV titan’s most important production sites, with local media reporting that the factory churned out 545,000 units last year at a rate of about one vehicle every minute.

The factory has continued to grow at a rapid pace. The state-owned media organization China Daily reported in May that BYD planned to add 20,000 employees in the first quarter of the year, with the company employing around 60,000 workers in Zhengzhou as of February.

Satellite imagery provided by Vantor and Planet Images suggests the Zhengzhou factory has more than doubled in size since July 2023, now dwarfing Tesla’s largest factory in Austin.

Between August and October, the Tesla rival received conditional environmental approval for several new construction projects, according to government documents viewed by Business Insider.

These included a battery production line expansion built by BYD’s subsidiary Zhengzhou Fudi Battery Co, a mold production line, and a new battery protection plate production line that a planning document said would cost around $16 million and produce battery protection plates for 4.7 million vehicles a year.

Analysis of the satellite imagery by Vantor suggests the entire footprint of the site is now around 22.5 square kilometres, far larger than the estimated 3.53 square kilometres footprint of Tesla’s largest gigafactory in Austin.

BYD and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the specific dimensions of the two factories.

BYD eventually plans to expand Zhengzhou’s annual production capacity to 1.8 million vehicles, per local media reports — more than Tesla produced across all its factories last year.

The Zhengzhou site also features a track racing and testing circuit, which BYD describes as the first of its kind for electric vehicles in China.