Auto manufacturing thrives in Luoxi town, E China's Jiangsu

Photo shows the car front seat production line at Yanfeng (Changzhou) Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Luoxi town, Changzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province. (People's Daily Online/Zhao Dengyan)

At 2:30 p.m., a truck pulls up to the platform at Yanfeng (Changzhou) Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Luoxi town, Changzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province. Soon, workers load 18 car front seat sets onto the vehicle.

Qu Yiming, head of the BYD car seat production line at Yanfeng (Changzhou) Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd., said the seats will reach BYD's Changzhou general assembly plant, just 4 kilometers away, in less than 20 minutes.

Bai Zhengtang, Party chief of Luoxi town, said that 12 out of every 100 electric vehicles China exports are produced in Luoxi, where roughly 35 out of every 100 local workers are employed in the new energy vehicle industry. The town produces 450,000 new energy vehicles annually.

Changzhou Xingyu Automotive Lighting System Co., Ltd., a publicly listed company, has an annual production capacity of 80 million automotive lights and supplies both leading Chinese and international automakers.

Jiang Lei checks the quality of a car light at Changzhou Xingyu Automotive Lighting System Co., Ltd. in Luoxi town, Changzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province. (People's Daily Online/Ren Xiaoran)

"From 8 a.m. until now, we've completed 202 headlights," said Jiang Lei, who oversees the production lines in the company's dust-free workshop.

The establishment of BYD's Changzhou plant enabled Luoxi town to produce complete vehicles. In 2025, the plant rolled out four electric vehicle models, with an annual output value of over 50 billion yuan (about $7.31 billion). More than 60 percent of these vehicles were exported to markets including Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

"Last year, we set up new production lines, boosting our capacity by roughly 50 percent. The number of trucks coming in and out of the factory every day has exceeded 200, putting a strain on logistics and causing traffic congestion on-site," said Zhang Chao, a project manager at Yanfeng (Changzhou) Auto Parts Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

The company reported the issue to the town government, which coordinated several departments and resolved the problem within just one week.

Photo shows the general assembly workshop of BYD's Changzhou plant in Changzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)