After Welcoming China’s Electric Vehicles, This Country Is Paying the Price

In Thailand’s carmaking hub of Rayong, China’s largest electric vehicle maker, BYD, built its first factory outside China, a complex the size of 180 football fields. Twenty miles south, a plant once run by General Motors is now owned by China’s Great Wall Motor. A 10-minute drive away, Ford took over a vehicle assembly plant from the Japanese automaker Suzuki.

All of this happened in the past five years — evidence of an industry in upheaval.

For decades, Japanese automakers dominated Thailand. They arrived in the 1960s, built supply chains and transformed the country into the “Detroit of the East.”

Then the Chinese automakers arrived.

Today, they control about 85 percent of Thailand’s electric vehicle market, up from almost zero four years ago. Japanese automakers, slow to embrace the technology, have struggled. In 2024 and 2025, Subaru and Suzuki shut down their Thai plants, while Nissan and Honda have scaled back production.

Several Thai auto-parts suppliers that depended on Japanese manufacturers went bankrupt, threatening a supply chain that employs about 700,000 workers.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/business/china-ev-thailand-cars.html