China’s BYD Is Racing Toward the Top of the Global EV Market
The Warren Buffett-backed automaker, the biggest car brand at home, has quickly expanded its clean-car sales in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
A BYD Han luxury sedan at the 2022 Paris Motor Show.
Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg
Mention the growing global popularity of electric vehicles, and most people think of cars from Tesla Inc., the world’s leading EV maker. But Elon Musk has some unlikely competition approaching in his rearview mirror. The bestseller in emerging clean-car markets Brazil, Israel and Thailand, for instance, isn’t a Tesla. Those bragging rights belong to BYD Co., the Chinese EV and plug-in hybrid maker whose wheels are increasingly plying streets from Sydney to Delhi and even Montevideo, Uruguay.
The Shenzhen-based company has been on a tear in China, dethroning Volkswagen AG as the nation’s biggest-selling car brand during this year’s first quarter—a remarkable disruption of Volkswagen’s dominance there since at least 2008, when data from the China Automotive Technology and Research Center became available. One reason for the turnabout: In that quarter, BYD accounted for 39% of the sales of new-energy vehicles (electrics or hybrids)—or 12% of all passenger-car sales—in China, the world’s largest auto market, based on data from the China Passenger Car Association.