On the outskirts of Szeged, the procession of Chinese construction workers begins in the early evening. On foot or on mud-caked bicycles, dozens set out for the supermarket across from the construction site in southern Hungary.

At 39 degrees Celsius, the low August sun still blazing overhead, they cross a dusty field and a newly paved road.

On the street sign in front of the roundabout leading to the plant, the company behind the construction site appears in red lettering: BYD, China's largest automaker and the world's largest electric-vehicle maker. Barely a hundred meters farther on, they have set up the factory gate, roughly 20 meters wide.

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For now, mostly shuttle buses, concrete mixers and rusty gasoline-powered Hondas and Opels carrying workers pass through it. But once the factory is finished, the cars of the future will begin rolling out.

The plant will be a European first for the company from the Chinese tech metropolis of Shenzhen – complete with a welding shop, a press shop, a paint facility, offices and apartments on a site roughly the size of Berlin’s Tempelhofer Feld park, a former airport. The price tag will amount to around 4 billion euros – and it is meant to manufacture up to 300,000 vehicles a year.