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It was the end of 2011 when a youthful-looking Elon Musk couldn’t suppress a grin at the thought that Tesla might ever be challenged by Chinese car maker BYD: “Have you seen their car?” he asked. “I don’t think it’s particularly attractive,” he continued in a TV interview. “The technology isn’t very convincing. And as a company, BYD has pretty serious problems in the home market.”
A decade later, the Shenzhen-based company led by Wang Chuanfu has snatched the title of leading battery-powered car maker from Tesla. In the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD, which was founded in 1995 and in which Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holds a stake, sold a record 526,000 purely battery-powered electric cars. At Tesla it was 484,000.
“Four to five years ago, no one would have thought that Chinese electric cars would offer such quality or reliability to be competitive,” says Tu Le, founder of the Beijing consulting firm Sino Auto Insights.
BYD’s success story adds luster to the legend of Wang, who rose from humble beginnings to become a billionaire. The story of the nonferrous metals research professor who transformed himself into a tough manager with a keen focus on technology, supply chains and cost reductions has become legend in Chinese science and business schools.
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