Why BYD’s first manufacturing foothold in Canada was a bust
Jason Kirby
Published January 23, 2026
Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
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With Canada opening the door slightly to Chinese electric passenger vehicles, Shenzhen-based carmaker BYD has been cited as one company that could benefit and be a potential investor in the sector.

But the Chinese auto giant has already made one foray into vehicle manufacturing in Canada that ended poorly: an electric bus assembly plant in Newmarket, Ont., that closed its doors after a handful of years, a victim of quality issues and political tensions between Ottawa and Beijing.

In 2019, BYD, now the world’s largest EV maker, trumpeted the opening of a 45,000-square-foot bus assembly plant in Newmarket, with a focus on producing an initial trial run of 10 electric buses for the Toronto Transit Commission – which would ultimately be the sum total of the plant’s output.

The Ontario plant was BYD’s second in North America after a bus assembly facility in Lancaster, Calif., and the first bus rolled out the door the following year.

Today the company’s name is stripped from the building, which has since been sold, marking the end of what the company saw as a foothold for its expansion into Canada.

Even in the U.S., where the company’s California plant produces electric school buses, the BYD name, which stands for “build your dreams,” is gone. In 2022, the company’s North American operations rebranded as RIDE, an acronym for “real innovation delivered with excellence.”

The company retains a “handful” of employees in Canada, said Frank Girardot, RIDE’s senior communications director. After the Newmarket facility completed the project for the TTC, it ceased operations, he said, declining to elaborate on the closing, or the status of any outstanding contracts.

What’s clear is that from early on, there were signs of quality issues with BYD’s buses in Canada.

“A big problem the TTC had when they were running the BYD buses was getting parts,” said Steve Munro, a Toronto transit watcher and blogger. “BYD didn’t have the whole supply chain that you’d expect anybody in the automotive industry would have to service people who own their product.”

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Replacement parts and language issues were among the challenges with the BYD buses, according to a 2022 TTC report.
Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail

The TTC documented the challenges posed by the vehicles in a 2022 report, which stated it was extremely difficult to obtain replacement parts. According to the report, it took BYD 73 days to source a replacement rear axle for one bus.

“BYD has not provided sufficient engineering support on site and remotely,” the report stated. “Repair manuals and procedures are of poor quality and BYD’s diagnostic tool is currently not available in English.”

Other municipalities that acquired BYD buses faced similar problems.

In 2017, St. Albert, Alta., became the first municipality in Canada to add long-range electric buses to its transit fleet, eventually buying a total of seven BYD buses by the following year. The vehicles were built at the California plant.

However, in 2023, the city revealed three of the seven vehicles required full battery replacements within the first five years of operation, while all seven required replacement of propulsion components like drive motors and gearboxes, according to the St. Albert Gazette. The battery replacements each took 80 days to complete.

Meanwhile, Montreal’s transit authority bought four buses from BYD in 2018 and 2019 that were never put into use because the battery range proved to be insufficient and the buses were not suitable for customers with reduced mobility, according to Amélie Régis, a spokesperson for Société de transport de Montréal. The buses are now used for day camps and corporate contracts.

Ted Dowling, the Canadian executive who served as vice-president of BYD Canada at the time, but who left the company in 2022, acknowledges that “at the start the buses had some issues, but if you talk to the TTC and other operators they’re very happy with them.”

In an e-mail, TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said because the BYD buses have a charging system that is incompatible with its infrastructure they are all in storage, while the transit agency tries to find new homes for them.

Rising tensions between Canada and China compounded BYD’s struggles in Canada, Mr. Dowling said, citing Beijing’s detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.

The pandemic also presented challenges, he said, though with the TTC order completed, BYD shifted gears at the facility in 2020 and used it to instead make and store personal protective equipment for the Ontario and federal governments.

A 2021 report from Ontario’s auditor-general showed that as of Dec. 31, 2020, BYD Canada had received $24.6-million for PPE gear.

Once Canada implemented a 100-per-cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in 2024 and launched consultations about further duties, “that shut everything down” in terms of BYD’s interest in Canada, said Mr. Dowling, though by then he’d left the company and the plant had closed.

Now Canada’s restrictions on Chinese EVs are lifting, with the federal government planning to allow 49,000 Chinese EVs to enter the market each year at a reduced tariff rate of 6.1 per cent. Part of the quota will be reserved for vehicles that cost less than $35,000.

The beneficiaries of that, at least for the portion above $35,000, will likely be Tesla and Polestar, said Mr. Dowling. “If you think a big company like BYD is going to spend $10-million” to adapt its vehicles for sale in Canada “for a market share of maybe 10,000 cars a year, it’s not going to happen.”

That said, BYD’s Chinese rival Chery Automobile Co. Ltd. is positioning itself to sell its EVs in Canada.

There is the possibility BYD may eventually invest in auto production in Canada, but doing so would require BYD to build extensive capacity to service its vehicles, he said.