Build Your Dream (BYD), has repealed its decision to push it’s electric vehicle launch in North America back. It has now been reset to its original launch time of next year.

The announcement that BYD’s electric vehicles would be back on schedule could have to do with the increasingly competitive electric car market. Most recently, the announcement of the Nissan Leaf with its 100-mile range and low price tag, has added to the mix of low price, long range electric vehicles coming into the US market in 2010.

The Chinese automaker has a few a aces up its sleeve coming into the electric vehicle market in that its backed by the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, and specializes in battery technology.

The first BYD all-electric vehicle expected to his the US market will be a five seat e6 crossover. Due to the BYD’s experience in battery technology, it is expected to an impressive range of 186 miles. While the cost is expected to be around $40,000, don’t expect to be picking one up anytime soon. Initial launch will see only a few hundred vehicles spread through select markets as well as to government agencies, utilities and some eco-friendly celebrities.

Warren Buffet, who purchased a 10 percent stake in BYD last fall, appeared on the cover of Fortune Magazine this week alongside a BYD E6 electric car. The green cover is titled “Buffett’s Electric Car” with a subhead of “If the Oracle’s plugging in, shouldn’t you?”

The feature article looks at the history of the Chinese company, BYD, and its founder Wang Chuan-Fu leading up to the investment by Buffet as well as the future plans for BYD’s aggressive expansion into the electric vehicle market.
BYD began in 1995 with $300,000 that Wang, then a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries, borrowed. Five years later BYD would be the world’s largest producer of cell phone batteries. By 2003, BYD got into car manufacturing and started building low-cost electric cars.

You have to love the attention getting antics of a company like BYD and a CEO like Wang Chuan-Fu. He knows how to work the press and he proved it at the Detroit Auto Show last January when he illegally drove around the showroom floor in one of BYD’s prototype hybrids.

Now Wang Chuan-Fu has caught our attention again, this time by drinking the fluid from one of BYD’s batteries. The stunt was designed to draw attention to the lack of toxicity of their new batteries.

With batteries likely to play an ever-larger role in the vehicles of the future and their inherent toxicity a growing environmental concern, it’s great to see BYD investing in safer batteries.

BYD (Build Your Dreams) is a Chinese automaker that also produces 65% of the world’s nickel-cadmium batteries and 30% of the world’s lithium-ion mobile phone batteries.