The world’s best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer is now BYD, a Chinese company, surpassing Elon Musk’s Tesla.
BYD has outperformed Tesla in production for the second year in a row. BYD has been supported by US investor Warren Buffett since 2008.
Build Your Dreams, or BYD, reported producing 3.02 million new energy vehicles in 2023. On Tuesday, the global American automaker Tesla revealed that it has produced 1.84 million vehicles.
Even still, BYD’s sales numbers include 1.6 million battery-alone vehicles and 1.4 million hybrids, meaning Tesla continues to lead the industry in the manufacturing of electric vehicles with only batteries.
However, BYD sold more battery-only cars than Tesla did in the last quarter of 2018 (526,000 to 484,000), marking a first.
Compared to Tesla, which gets 20% of its sales from the Chinese market, BYD sells the majority of its cars for less money.
Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers, including BYD and Nio, are aiming to take the lead in global markets, with a concentration on Europe. BYD announced plans to construct a new facility in Hungary in December.
BYD now offers five models in Europe and expects to launch three more this year. The company stated last year that the effects of Brexit prevented it from considering constructing its first European manufacturing in the UK. According to BYD, the UK was not even in the top 10 lists of potential places for the company’s first European auto production.
By 2030, the best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer in China hopes to sell 800,000 vehicles a year in Europe.
These objectives, meanwhile, might be in jeopardy now that the European Commission has opened an anti-subsidy probe into imports of Chinese electric vehicles in September.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, commented on the decision at the time, claiming that Chinese electric cars were being “kept artificially low by state subsidies” and were now flooding international markets.
The probe, which is anticipated to take a year, may lead to the EU putting harsh taxes on cars made in China.
Founded in 1995 by Wang Chuanfu, a former university professor, the Hong Kong-listed company BYD aims to become a global force in the electric car market. The company started off developing batteries.
