Welcome back to EV News Daily. Welcome to a special bonus edition of the podcast.

And let's get into a show that I've called BYD versus Volkswagen.

The Jugginauts are colliding in Europe.

In the agricultural flatlands of southern Hungary, the soil tells a story.

For generations, these fields produced paprika or wheat.

Today, excavators are carving the foundations of an EV revolution. Trenches stretch across the landscape

now, not for irrigation, but for the infrastructure of a battery plant that will consume as much water as a town of 50,000 people.

The land once sold for a pittance has revalued itself at 17 times its original price

to accommodate its new Chinese guest.

800 kilometres to the northwest in the exhausted industrial heart of Walsberg in Germany,

a different excavation is happening. Production workers of Volkswagen face the incomprehensible.

The company announced the permanent shutdown of its Dresden plant as the final car rolled off

the production lines in December, marking the first factory closure in its 88-year history.

The crown jewel of German manufacturing shutters itself.

These twin excavations, one rising near Budapest, the other crumbling in Walsberg,

reveal how electric vehicles are reshaping the automotive industry,

and two of the

giants of the industry doing battle on each other's turf. For a long time, China has been such a

profitable place for Volkswagen to go and do business, but now BYD want to go the other way. They

want to come to Europe for a lot of reasons, and it's not all sunshine and roses at home in China.

So that's what today's special podcast is going to dive into. The European automotive sector, long the engine of continental prosperity, is having an existential moment.

China's champion, BYD, now the biggest TV maker in the world of

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