BYD is a giant Chinese NEV maker based in the southern Chinese megacity of Shenzhen. NEV stands for New Energy Vehicle, a Chinese category that includes EVs, PHEVs, and FCEVs. BYD owns several brands: BYD, Denza, Fangcheng Bao, and Yangwang.
The BYD brand is mass-market, offering everything from cheap electric econoboxes to extremely powerful tri-motor PHEVs. Tesla is seriously afraid of BYD. Tesla reportedly canceled the $25K car, partially because it knows it can’t compete with BYD on price. For a short while, BYD was the largest EV maker (counting only the EVs and not the PHEVs) in the world, but Tesla took that position back again, for now.
At the same time, BYD supplies LFP batteries for the Tesla Model Y. Keep your enemies close..? In Beijing, I visited a typical BYD dealer in mystery-shopper style. This article is about the cars I saw at the dealer and on the road.
A Short History of BYD Auto
BYD was founded in 1995 as a battery maker for mobile phones and other electronics. That was a widely successful business and in the early 2000s, BYD decided to move into cars. At the time, the Chinese car market was slowly starting to grow.
As a shortcut, BYD bought a company called Qinchuan Auto, which made a Suzuki Alto-based minicar called the Qinchuan Flyer. You can read all about the Flyer here. BYD renamed Qinchuan Auto to BYD Auto, and the Qinchuan Flyer became the BYD Flyer, which was BYD’s first car. It was available with 0.9 and 1.1-liter gasoline engines and it cost next to nothing.
BYD ET Concept
At that time there were no EVs in China, except for a few demonstration projects. But BYD was already thinking ahead. In 2004, BYD unveiled the ET, a concept for a mass-market electric car. See this article for more about this interesting vehicle.
BYD F3
In the meantime, BYD quickly expanded its lineup with cheap gasoline-powered cars with a design heavily inspired by Toyota. The BYD F3 sedan was the first best-seller for BYD, competing with cars like the FAW-Volkswagen Jetta, the FAW-Toyota Corolla EX (haha), and the Dongfeng-PSA Citroen Fukang.
The BYD F3 spawned the F3 DM (Dual Motor), China’s first mass-market PHEV. BYD never did HEVs, they went straight from ICE to PHEV.
BYD F6
In the late 2000s, BYD moved slightly upmarket with the F6, a larger sedan with a design heavily inspired by the Honda Accord.
Hello Warren and Bill
BYD got a big boost in 2008 when Warren Buffet invested in the company, buying 9.9% of outstanding shares for $232 million. Two years later, Buffet himself traveled to Shenzhen, accompanied by Charlie Munger and his buddy Bill Gates. This infamous photo shows the gentlemen during that visit, with BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu. They stand around a BYD M6 MPV, which was a complete clone of the first-generation Toyota Previa.
BYD Tang
The BYD Tang was the coolest BYD SUV of the 2010s. It looked very racy and it was insanely powerful for the time: a PHEV with a 2.0 turbo and two electric motors. The combined output was 505hp and 820nm. It did 0-100 in 4.9 seconds! For a while, it was one of the most powerful SUVs in the world, but outside of China, almost nobody knew about it.
BYD e6
The first full-electric BYD was the 2009 e6, an MPV-like vehicle aimed at the taxi market. Later on, it became available in the passenger car market as well. It was very successful and production of the first generation continued until 2020. When you travel to southern China, there is a big chance your taxi will be an e6. I have been in dozens of them, and they were surprisingly quick in city traffic. Drivers were quite happy with the e6, and many told me the real-world range was 400 kilometers. Claimed range? 400 kilometers (250 miles)!
BYD Qin EV
In the 2010s BYD started to poop out ever more similar sedans, with ICE, PHEV, and EV power. This white beauty is a BYD Qin EV, launched in 2016 with a 218 hp electric motor and a 190-mile range.
BYD e1
This is a BYD e1, BYD’s first take on a cheap mass-market electric city car. It was based on the platform of the gasoline-powered BYD F0, which was a clone of the Toyota Aygo, Fuzzily, production of the F0 ended in 2015, but the e1 only arrived in 2020. Like I have said and written many times before: Chinese cars never really die and Chinese car makers throw away absolutely nothing. Fast forward to:
BYD Today: So Many BYDs
The naming of Chinese companies is always a tad confusing. Today, the group is called BYD Company. The most important businesses are:
- BYD Auto, which is the car business. It includes the brands: BYD (cars, trucks, buses), Denza, Fangcheng Bao, and Yangwang.
- BYD Electronics, the original battery and electronics business.
- BYD Semiconductors, a chip-design business.
- BYD Forklift, makes electric forklifts.
- BYD FinDreams, supplies electric motors and batteries to other car makers, including Tesla.
In 2023, BYD Company had a revenue of 602.3 billion yuan ($84.70 billion) and earnings of $5.6 billion. At this moment, BYD Company has a market cap of $87 billion. In 2023, BYD sold 3,024,417 vehicles, including passenger cars and commercial vehicles.
BYD has adopted the backronym “Build Your Dreams” to explain the name, which is actually derived from a street where the company was founded.
The BYD (brand) Lineup Is Amazingly Complex And Crazy
BYD needs a lot of cars to get there. In the past, all Chinese brands and joint venture brands had this particular habit of launching new cars while keeping the old ones around as well. This led to complicated lineups with multiple generations of cars sold alongside each other. See my earlier articles about Hyundai and about Buick. Most Chinese brands have since stopped this madness. They are finally able to cancel a car! But not BYD. Not at all. BYD launches a new car almost every two weeks. No exaggeration. And they keep the old ones, too. These older cars are usually updated, renamed, updated again, and fitted with new power trains, like the BYD e1 above. But they don’t die.
At this moment, BYD has the craziest lineup of any Chinese car brand, with many cars similar in size, power, and price. As of today (18/05/2024), BYD sells 21 car models, with another 4 set to launch soon. No dealer building is large enough to display so many cars, so most dealers only show the newest or best-selling models. BYD is aware of this and is launching larger experience centers where they show all cars of all their brands, but I haven’t seen such a center in Beijing.
BYD sells its cars in two main series: Dynasty and Ocean. The former is focused on luxury, the latter is a bit sportier. The Ocean Series has two sub-series: animals and warships. Earlier, there were rumors about a separate Warship Series, but that didn’t happen. Later, it was reported that the animals would be the EVs and the warships the PHEVs, that was true in the beginning, but not anymore. So right now, it seems random which cars get which sub-series name. Besides these, BYD also sells a few cars that are not in these two series.
To understand the madness, I have created a table. I decided to order the table by sales % in March 2024. In that month, BYD was the top-selling car brand in China with 244.823 cars sold.
| Model | Series | Shape | Launch | Power | Price $K | Wheelbase | % of sales |
| Qin Plus | Dynasty | Sedan | 2021 | PHEV/EV | 11 – 25 | 2718 | 20.58 |
| Song Plus | Dynasty | SUV | 2021 | PHEV/EV | 18 – 29 | 2765 | 14.37 |
| Seagull | Ocean | Hatchback | 2023 | EV | 0.97 – 12 | 2500 | 11.38 |
| Song Pro | Dynasty | SUV | 2019 | PHEV | 15 – 22 | 2712 | 11.21 |
| Yuan Plus | Dynasty | Crossover | 2022 | EV | 16 – 22 | 2720 | 8.97 |
| Han | Dynasty | Sedan | 2020 | PHEV/EV | 23 – 41 | 2920 | 8.32 |
| Destroyer 05 | Ocean | Sedan | 2022 | PHEV | 11 – 18 | 2718 | 7.68 |
| Dolphin | Ocean | Hatchback | 2021 | EV | 14 – 19 | 2700 | 5.18 |
| Tang | Dynasty | SUV | 2018 | PHEV/EV | 25 – 37 | 2820 | 5.15 |
| Seal | Ocean | Sedan | 2021 | PHEV/EV | 21 – 34 | 2900 | 2.29 |
| Song L | Dynasty | SUV-coupe | 2024 | EV | 26 – 34 | 2930 | 2.13 |
| e2 | – | Hatchback | 2019 | EV | 12.5 – 13 | 2610 | 0.74 |
| Yuan UP | Dynasty | Crossover | 2024 | EV | 13 – 17 | 2620 | 0.62 |
| Frigate 07 | Ocean | SUV | 2023 | PHEV | 25 – 44 | 2820 | 0.46 |
| Qin | Dynasty | Sedan | 2012 | EV | 20 – 23 | 2670 | 0.41 |
| Yuan Pro | Dynasty | Crossover | 2021 | EV | 11 – 14 | 2535 | 0.39 |
| e3 | – | Sedan | 2019 | EV | 14 | 2610 | 0.06 |
| D1 | – | MPV[taxi] | 2021 | EV | 23 | 2800 | 0.06 |
| e9 | – | Sedan [taxi] | 2021 | EV | 33.5 | 2920 | 0 |
| Song Max | Dynasty | MPV | 2018 | PHEV | 19 – 23 | 2785 | 0 |
| Sea Lion 07 | Ocean | Crossover | 2024 | EV | 26 – 33 | 2930 | NEW |
| Upcoming | Estimated | ||||||
| Qin L | Dynasty | Sedan | 2024 | PHEV | 21 – 25 | 2790 | – |
| Seal X | Ocean | Hatchback | 2024 | EV | ? | 2820 | – |
| Seal 06 | Ocean | Sedan | 2024 | PHEV | 21 – 25 | 2790 | – |
| Shark | Ocean | Pickup truck | 2024 | PHEV | ? | ? | – |
| – |
Notes:
- BYD is a cheap brand. The cheapest model costs just under $10K and the most expensive model is only $37K. For comparison: the China-made Tesla Model 3 costs $32K – $46.5K and the Tesla Model Y costs $34.6K – $49K.
- There is a wide price range for many models. The battery type mainly causes this. BYD is a battery maker, after all, so it likes to offer up to 5 different batteries for each model.
- The D1 and e9 models are developed for the taxi/ride-hailing market. Individuals can buy one, but almost nobody does.
- BYD regularly lowers its prices, sometimes by 10-15% in one go, so this table may be outdated the moment you see it ):
At the dealer
And in I went. It was again a hot summer day with temperatures up to 37°C (98,6°F). Happily, the aircon was set to freeze so I cooled down quickly. The building looked new and clean with proper lighting. I was greeted by five folks sitting behind a desk, checking phones and computers. The girl on the left nodded and they let me be. The desk was dressed in an Ocean theme, with blue waves and a splashy dolphin. I felt right at home.
On the left the Song Plus DM-i. In BYD-speak, “DM-i” refers to a PHEV. It stands for Dual Mode-intelligent. This is the most common BYD PHEV powertrain. They also got DM-p, Dual Mode-powerful, for the most powerful PHEVs. And then there is DM-o, for Dual Motor-off road, that powertrain is mainly used in the Fangcheng Bao-branded vehicles.
Behind the two cars was a giant projector screen, with the computer’s taskbar visible. Messy! The ‘818’ advertisement refers to a “Super 818 Festival Season,” where dealers gave away car gifts, cash gifts, after-sales service gifts, and financial gifts. Chinese car brands organize this kind of fun all the time, so at any given moment car buyers can get free accessories, gifts (food, drinks, Red Bull, toys, furniture, tents, fruit), cash-backs, free service, or discounts and extra low down payments.
BYD’s Super 818 Carnival Season is part of the wider annual 818 Fever Shopping Festival, which starts on August 18 (8/18). This consumer festival is celebrated all over China, for any kind of product. During the festival, consumers can watch live shows on TV with lots of dancing and singing and discounts, like this brilliant 2-hour and 16-minute show by Zhejiang Satellite TV (with Lincoln at 1:01:00).
BYD Seagull
The BYD Seagull is a small electric hatchback. When launched, it caused a big stir in China and abroad, as it was seen as a revolutionary electric vehicle: lots of power and space for a low price. In export markets, it is called the Dolphin Mini.
There is export to Southeast Asia, and it will also be sold in Europe. The Seagull is an attractive car, with a single windshield wiper, large mirrors, and tiny 16-inch tires. The car in the photo is painted in Sprout Green. Power: single-motor FWD. Output is 55 kW and 135 Nm. The top speed is 130 km/h (80 mph). BYD claims 0-50 in 4.9 seconds. Chinese car makers often quote 0-50 times for smaller cars, instead of 0-100. Electricity is stored in a BYD Blade LFP battery: 30.08 kWh for 190 miles of range or 38.88 kWh for 251 miles.
BYD Song Plus DM-i
The Song Plus comes as an EV or as a PHEV. The car in the photo has DM-i on the plate, so it is the PHEV version. The EV has a slightly different front. The headlights look interesting. The Song Plus is a front-wheel drive car. Most affordable BYDs have front-wheel drive, both PHEVs and EVs. That differs from most other Chinese car makers, who usually go for RWD with their EV models. The power train combines a 1.5-liter ICE with a single electric motor and an E-CVT gearbox. The combined output is 135 kW and 325 Nm, good for 170 km/h and 0-100 in 8,2 seconds. BYD offers 3 LFP battery sizes: 12.9 kWh for 44 miles of EV-only range, 110 kWh for 68 miles, and 26.6 kWh for 93 miles. It has a 60-liter fuel tank. Unlike most other Chinese car makers, BYD doesn’t specify the PHEV range.
The chief automotive designer of BYD is Wolfgang Egger, a German fellow who previously worked for Alfa Romeo, Seat, Lancia, Audi, and Lamborghini. Egger came to BYD in 2017, he was hired to create a design identity for BYD. Since 2022, he is also responsible for the new Fangcheng Bao brand.
Normally, his role is to oversee the general design direction, but sometimes he is allowed to go wild and pen a car all by himself. Many Chinese car makers employ famous European and American designers. I know from friends-of-friends who work at car companies in China that the arrival of a hot foreign designer often leads to friction with the Chinese design team. This, in turn, leads to confusing design decisions and directions, the opposite of what was intended. I cannot name a single legacy Chinese brand where it worked well. It is different with the new EV companies, which aren’t hindered by the past. Good examples are Benjamin Baum at Li Auto and Kris Tomasson at NIO, who have created recognizable design languages.
BYD Destroyer 05
The Destroyer o5 is a compact sedan. I like the front design, with darkened headlights that are seamlessly connected by the grille, with the BYD logo in the middle. Below the grille are 5 horizontal bars. The Destroyer 05 is a PHEV-only car. The power train is similar to the Song Plus: FWD, 1.5 ICE, and a single electric motor, mated to an E-CVT. Output is 123 kW and 316 Nm, and that is enough for 115 mph and 0-100 in 7.3 seconds. The base model is super cheap and there is a reason for that, it only has a tiny 11.4 kWh battery for an EV range of just 34 miles. The other models have a 14.5 kWh battery pack, and that pushes the range up to 74 miles.
Ah, some atmosphere! With four modernist-abstract-IA paintings, neatly in a row. I liked the red one best. The plants were fake.
The toilets are on the left, I checked them out, all perfectly clean and comfortable. The blue seats were comfy too. On the right, I could see potential customers talking and doing things with their mobile phones. A BYD salesman, seen from the back, was patiently waiting.
Checking out the other side. There was a mega-screen on the wall again, and this one was displaying without a taskbar. The scenes on screen were a bit boring though, showing an ocean with a bunch of weirdly shaped clouds. I would show something more exciting on such a large screen! But then again, the cars are probably exciting enough, aren’t they? From left to right the Dolphin, the Seal, and the Destroyer 07.
BYD Dolphin
The Dolphin is a compact electric hatchback. The Chinese car market digs hatchbacks, but only when they are small and cheap. There isn’t a large market for larger hatchbacks, as consumers would just get an SUV or a sedan. The Dolphin launched in 2021 and hasn’t been updated since, which is highly unusual. The design isn’t in line with the other Ocean cars, so a facelift is long overdue, but I haven’t seen any spy shots yet. The Dolphin is a front-wheel drive car, based on BYD’s e-Platform 3.0. The single motor has an output of 70 kW and 180 Nm. The top speed is 93 mph and 0-50 takes 3.9 seconds. BYD offers two LFP battery packs: 32.35 kWh for 187 miles and 44.9 kWh for 250 miles.
The Dolphin is 1:18, a nice addition perhaps for my collection.
BYD e-Platform 3.0
All modern full-electric BYDs are based on the e-Platform 3.0. It is highly flexible and able to accommodate cars with a wheelbase from 2500 to 3000 millimeters. It is available in FWD and AWD forms. It features Cell to Body (CTB) technology, where the battery pack is integrated into the floor of the chassis. BYD builds everything in-house, the electric motors, controllers, and of course the batteries.
BYD Blade battery
There has been a lot of ado about BYD’s Blade LFP battery. It is used in all modern BYD EVs and PHEVs, and it’s sold to various other car makers like Kia, Tesla, Toyota, and Xiaomi. The Blade name refers to the structure: the cells are built in the pack as long, thin ‘Blades,’ becoming part of the pack’s structure. BYD claims the Blade battery is stronger, safer, more efficient, and longer-lasting than a conventional one.
BYD Destroyer 07
This is my favorite new BYD. It has a great name: Destroyer 07. And it looks badass indeed, with menacing headlights, a giant grille with gray slats, a high hood, and wide fenders. OT is nearly five meters long but it only seats five. BYD doesn’t sell a 5- or 7-seat version, which is a bit odd, as most competitors do.
The Destroyer 07 is one of the few current BYD PHEVs available with AWD. The base DM-i models are FWD again, combining a 1.5 turbo with a single electric motor. Output is 145 kW and 316 Nm. The top speed is 112 mph and 0-100 takes 8.5 seconds. BYD offers two Blade battery packs: 18.3 kWh for a 62-mile range and 36.8 kWh for 127 miles. The AWD is properly badass: 1.5 turbo plus two electric motors, combined output is 295 kW and 656 Nm. The top speed is 112 mph and 0-100 takes 4.7 seconds. It uses the same 36.8 kWh battery, and the EV range is 93 miles.
There is enough space for another car here, easily. Instead, the corner was filled with another table, which seemed tiny under the towering screen.
On the table stood a box of BYD Ocean tissues. I didn’t see any BYD Dynasty tissue boxes, but I am sure they have those, too.
The mini-bar with coffee, tea, and iced tea. I tried the latter, it tasted good, ice cold and super sweet, perfect for a hot day.
BYD Seal
The Seal is probably the most famous current BYD. It is a great-looking sedan, streamlined and sporty, with cool design details like the illuminated lines in the black holes in the bumper. The car on display is an AWD model painted in Atlantis Gray. The front design is called Ocean X Face. The BYD Seal is exported to various Southeast Asian and European markets. There, it is known as a “Tesla Model 3 killer.” But in China, the Seal doesn’t sell very well. In March, BYD sold 5,618 Seals and Tesla sold 14,481 Model 3s.
BYD is known for putting the 0-100 km (0-62 mph) times on the back of their cars. BYD did that a lot in the 2010s, but recently they don’t do it very often anymore. But the Seal still got it! 3.8 seconds it is and everybody must know about it. Characters: 海豹, Haibào, Seal. BYD offers many different power train options: single motor RWD: 150kW/310nm, 170kW/330Nm, and 230kW/360Nm. But the quickest swimming Seal is the dual motor AWD model, with 390kW and 670Nm. The top speed is limited to 112 mph and 0-100 takes, well, look at the badge! The AWD has an 82.2 kWh LFP battery for a 404-mile range.
The Seal in 1:18, in the same color!
What, no lidar? Eye of God
Most Chinese car makers fit lidar on their vehicles to support the ADAS. These lidars are fitted above the windshield or in the bumper. BYD, however, doesn’t do lidar. In fact, BYD doesn’t do much ADAS at all, it is a weak point in the brand’s technology armor. The sensor suite of any BYD is less impressive than the competition’s. Let’s take the Seal as an example. The ADAS system is called DiPilot 100, with the brilliant official nickname Eye of God (天神之眼). It has 6 cameras, 1 driver-focused camera, 6 ultrasonic radars, and 3 millimeter wave radars. Let’s compare that with the Zeekr 007, one of the Seal’s main competitors. It has one lidar, 12 cameras, 1 driver-focused camera, 12 ultrasonic radars, and 9 millimeter-wave radars. BYD is aware of this and rarely mentions ADAS in its PR.
BYD e2
The BYD e2 is an interesting oddity. It is not a part of the Ocean or Dynasty series, but it also isn’t a specialized taxi model like the D1 or the e9. The e2 is an older EV that has been updated with modern looks. It was launched in 2019 and it is not based on e-Platform 3.0. There is a sedan too, called the BYD e3. Sales are very slow so one may wonder why BYD keeps it around. Well, that is because BYD keeps ALL its cars around, forever.
BYD recently lowered the price of the base model by almost 40%, so sales of the e2 are up recently. Strangely, they didn’t do the same with the e3, so sales of the sedan are not up. The e2 is a single-motor front-wheel drive machine. Output is 70 kW and 180 Nm, good for a road-shattering top speed of 81 mph and a 0-50 of 4.9 seconds. The 43.2 kWh LFP battery is relatively large for a vehicle of this size, but it is an older battery pack, not a Blade. The range is 405 miles. I have never seen one of these on the road, it seems rarer than a Ferrari.
Stuff
BYD caps for 50 yuan (About $7). On the left is the Dynasty cap, and on the right is the Ocean cap. The BYD logo is quite small, so what’s the point?
Couples can ride into the sunshine, a pink one for the missus and a chrome one for the hubby. Complete with a BYD-branded case.
This one is a bit like the Great Chinese Kitch of the 2000s! It is an aroma diffuser for the Ocean Series, with two shiny dolphins on top.
A flashy bag, again with a small BYD logo. The bag is made of plastic with a shiny layer on top. The front pattern looks like fish scales, so I guess this one is for the Ocean Series.
Time To Go
It was time to leave. I had been inside for about 45 minutes, checked out all the cars, and had some tea. It was a nice place to be. The staff didn’t bother me if I didn’t ask anything, and that’s just the way I like it. At NIO, for example, I was constantly followed by a minder.
Random On The Road
The majority of the cars that BYD sells were not at the dealer, but I found some on the road.
BYD Han
The BYD Han is a full-size sedan in EV or PHEV form. The red beauty that I saw is the RWD EV version, with 168 kW and 350 Nm. The most common battery is a 72 kWh unit with a range of 605 kilometers. BYD also sells a dual-motor AWD variant, with 380 kW and 700 Nm.
BYD D1
The BYD D1 MPV is an interesting car. It was jointly developed with DiDi, China’s largest ride-hailing company. It has a basic interior and a large sliding door for easy access and exit. Initially, it was sold exclusively to taxi companies that operate under the DiDi umbrella. However, private buyers can buy one too now. It makes sense as a no-nonsense family car, but sales are slow. Power: FWD, 100 kW and 180 Nm. Electricity is stored in a 53.6 kWh Blade LFP for a range of 260 miles.
BYD Qin Plus EV
The Qin Plus EV is BYD’s best-selling sedan in China, so it was weird that it wasn’t at the dealer. Probably sold out. In China, you can buy any car in the showroom, at any time. The Qin Plus is not particularly pretty, it looks kind of boring, but many Chinese car buyers are just fine with boring. The Qin Plus EV is a FWD car with a single electric motor, 100 kW, and 180 Nm. It has a Blade battery of 48 kWh for 260 miles or 57.7 kWh for 317 miles.
BYD Song Plus DM-i (2021)
This is the Dong Plus DM-i, not a current car but the 2021-2023 variant. I added it for the pink wrap, which is a rare wrap color on a BYD.
Is Tesla right to be afraid?
Yes, and not really. Yes, because what BYD has achieved in such a short time is incredible. BYD can launch new models at a supersonic pace, and each model is a little bit better than the previous one. BYD cars are affordable, well-built, and well-liked. BYD runs an extensive dealer network all over the country, so consumers can buy one everywhere. Maintenance is affordable and running costs are low. BYD is in the middle of a massive export push, conquering markets all over the planet with cars that are way cheaper than what Tesla has on offer.
On the not-really side, most BYD cars don’t directly compete with Tesla on price, as they are generally much cheaper than what Tesla offers. This is different for BYD’s other brands, especially Denza, but that’s a different story. Also: BYD sells so many cars they massively cannibalize each other, BYD is behind with ADAS, earnings per vehicle are still much lower than at Tesla, and BYD Company is busy launching many other brands, which will undoubtedly distract the company from focusing on its core BYD brand.
This is a problem that we have seen with so many Chinese car makers: as soon as they have a brand that sells well, they don’t put extra focus on that brand. Instead, they launch another brand. Imagine that Tesla would have launched a second brand in 2015, another one in 2020, and another one next year. Investors would have gone mad! But in China that’s okay, it is just how things roll over there.
To America?
Not now. The US has slapped a 27.5% import tariff on Chinese cars, and the Biden administration has announced it’s raising it to 100%. With tariffs like that, not a single Chinese car maker will export cars to the US. But BYD is coming close to the US border anyway. It sells cars in many countries in Latin America, including Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, and Mexico.
It has a factory in Brazil and wants to build another one in Mexico, to supply the local market and as a possible loophole for exports to the US. Earlier this month, BYD Mexico announced a new PHEV pickup truck, the Shark, which will launch in Mexico first, to compete directly with mid-size pickup trucks by American brands. So yes, tariffs will keep the Chinese away from the US. But in the rest of the world, competition is heating up.
I don’t think Tesla is afraid of BYD per se. But BYD is viewed by Musk and Tesla as their #1 competitor.
Also if BYD wants to expand to North America, their product mix is lacking in larger trucks and SUVs. What they produce seems better suited to the European market.
But when you say “At this moment, BYD has the craziest lineup of any Chinese car brand, with many cars similar in size, power, and price.”
That reminds me of General Motors of the 1980s. That model duplication was actaully a detriment to the company in several ways just like it was for GM.
It raises costs, makes it hard to keep all the models current, makes it hard to clearly define the given brand they are selling and it can also mean they won’t have the financial or labour resources to expand into segments they should be competing in.
And I looked at BYD’s financial numbers their profit margins are less than half of what Tesla acheives.
In a lot of ways, Tesla and BYD are opposites.
Tesla is clearly higher end, BYD is lower end.
BYD has many similar, poorly defined models. Tesla has few, but clearly defined models.
What BYD sells is biased to smaller vehicles. What Tesla sells is biased to larger vehicles.
BYD has low profit margins (less than 5%), Tesla has the highest (or close to it) margins in automotive.
Yeah both sell BEVs, but they are very different companies.
Comparing BYD to Tesla is kind of like comparing 1980s GM to 1980s BMW.
BTW – That photo-op w/ Warren, Charlie and Bill?
That Minivan was a copy of the 3rd gen Previa – not the 1st.
Visited our local BYD dealer with family a few days back, Dad was interested in the Yangwang U8 and an aunt wanted an electric runabout, so we checked out the Seagull as well.
The U8 was just your typical Chinese luxury SUV, massaging seats gigantic screens and leather everywhere. The Seagull was real surprising though, it looked cheap and cheerful on the outside, but the interior looked like it came from a car way above its price point. Dash and door panels were covered in soft materials, seats were supportive, and the rear was surprisingly roomy for anyone under 6′. Didn’t like how it drove though, way too refined and numb for my tastes, and it’s devoid of the “small car fun”. An impressive and refined car, but as Marie Kondo would say: it does not spark joy.
It was a little surreal, checking out BYDs while one of their showrooms (Dynasty showroom, for the Tangs Songs Qins etc) next door had burnt to a crisp that morning. The salespeople were whisked away to an urgent H&S (and probably PR) meeting while we were there, leaving us with a mostly empty showroom. Look up the BYD Fuzhou dealer fire if you’re interested.
Thanks for your impressions. I grew up in air-cooled VWs, and drove last century’s cheap shitboxes until 2009. What little experience I’ve had with this century’s little runabouts has left me with the impression that the days of cheap, peppy little light cars is pretty much over in NA due to safety regulations. My 02 Subaru has 3x the power of my 82 Rabbit—but weighs over 1000lbs more, and, while certainly safer and stiffer, is nowhere near as crisp in the handling department. I can’t find the weight of the Seagull Ocean hatch: do you know?
The 30kWh Seagull weighs 1160kg, and the 39kWh weighs 1240kg, per autohome.com.cn. So not overly bloated compared with most of the EVs out there, but still too meaty for a car this size. It used to be a car I actually desired, now its just a car I respect.
Side note, I DD a Renault K-ZE, the first iteration of the EV now known as the Dacia Spring in Europe. Curb weight is 921kg, so not too far off from your VW Rabbit, and its just a blast to drive, even with 165mm tires and just 45hp on tap. After giving the Seagull a go the Renault just seems so much more engaging, even with your typical overboosted power steering. They even dialed in some lift-off oversteer, something I didn’t expect in a $10k EV econobox. The Seagull is objectively a superior car in almost every measurable aspect, but the heart wants what it wants.
I like the look of the Seagull. That would be an excellent city car, or maybe for short trips. If it were available here I would definitely consider checking it out.
The whole BYD, Chinese tarrifs thing comes across to me as a replay of the ‘invading Japanese hordes’ of the 70’s and 80’s. Indiginous automakers have lost significant share to the Japanese, Germans and Koreans in spite of past protectionism. IMO Tesla will be squeezed out overseas and in China. As to its fate in NA I don’t know. I cannot see it getting much more market share feeding at the high end of the market. I really cannot see the high pricing regime of all manufacturers continue to be a viable option long term.
I have a BYD Atto3 which I think is the Yuan Plus in China. (It’s a company car) and it’s definitely competitive. It’s quirky and weird but at the same time totally conventional where it needs to be, there’s no learning curve when you get into it unlike a Tesla (infotainment excluded) which is why they were picked for our fleet.
However you can tell where they have cut corners to make it cheaper, there’s no lumbar and limited seat bottom adjustment. No memory seats, no lock/unlock button on the passenger side (which is super weird given that they make it in left and right hand drive so they would have the parts on the shelf) the “leather” is the fakest stuff I’ve encountered, and they come fitted with the worst tyres imaginable, so it can’t put any power down without losing grip. But they are a definite competitor, not only to Tesla, but VW, Kia, Hyundai – anyone producing mass market EVs. For my money I’d take a lower spec VW ID4, it has more range, but less toys on the inside for the same money, or spend a not much more and get a Tesla 3 or Y. But plenty of people would get the Atto3.
So they’re continually releasing new models and still cranking out old models, I’m wondering how that even works from a manufacturing standpoint. Is it like one factory retools every month or so to do batches of specific cars? Do they just have overstock of the older models sitting around somewhere so they aren’t really ‘new’ cars? Like how we have the last ‘new’ Jeep Patriot sitting on a lot some where in Sheboygan?
Also wondering about how like over here car makes have to have a certain number of years worth of back stock of parts for reparability, is that a thing over there? Or do they just crank out one model and switch over to the next new one and if somebody needs a bumper of the previous one, too bad?
I’d be curious how different say Buick is for what it builds over there. My thinking is they build similarly to how they do over here as they just have about 7 to 9 models there(depending how they’re defined) compared to 4 over here still several more, but nothing compared to BYD.
Seems like BYD is just throwing spaghetti at the shower wall to see what sticks but as mentioned they keep launching new brands so not even really caring what does stick, the whole thing is just bizarre.
That’s in China. In Australia and New Zealand they have an actual strategy. We get the Dolphin, the Atto 3 and the Seal. (We may also get the seagull). This company isn’t messing around!
Pretty sure there’s a misplaced decimal in the Seagull Ocean hatchback price because, at $970 I’d imagine most people could afford a 100% tariff on them—and would certainly be willing to try it no matter the labor or data situation
I’ll probably lease a BYD Seal for my next vehicle, and why wouldn’t I when it has a 6 year vehicle warranty, 8 year battery warranty, there’s great tax benefits for leasing EV over ICE where I’m from, and it undercuts the Model 3 hugely on price. Just makes sense to give one a go.
Any chance we’ll be seeing these in Canada?
Thank you for very interesting article. I know little of car manufacture, but I am gripped by the flow of new models in what I visualize as an iterative process of improvement. Other commenters sound correct: legacy auto makers are far behind the 8-ball.
Another winning article from Tycho. Thanks for all the research!
That Han sedan is pretty. I’d drive that.
Re. Launching new models and new brands frequently: that’s also how some Chinese brands of earphones operate. A major one named KZ releases more than a dozen new models at every price point every year, and spun off at least one sister brand that does the same thing.
I predict that the current upward trajectory of prices of the available new offerings available in the U.S., along with the increasing complexity and unrepairable nature of new cars, coupled with the proposed 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, will eventually assure that working Americans of modest means can’t afford to go anywhere. What are thy going to do? Take mass transit that doesn’t exist?
And perhaps that is intentional.
If the U.S. automakers wanted to, they could 2-3 decades ago build inexpensive EVs built to last a lifetime that could be repaired with basic tools. But no one does that. BYD is the manufacturer that builds products that most closely resemble that ideal, but their offerings won’t be allowed here. It’s all about maximizing extraction from people. Just sign on the dotted line for a 96-month payment plan at 11% interest for a $60,000+ crossover instead…
The legacy manufacturers deserve to go bankrupt, at this rate, but should that happen, our tax dollars will be used to bail them out again.
GM has closed 16 factories in North America since the 2009 bailout, lost about 10 points in market share, withdrawn from most international markets, and announced plans to move out of their own headquarters into two rented floors in someone else’s building that they won’t even hold naming rights for, eliminating themselves even from Detroit’s skyline. I’d say they’ve successfully gone from too big to fail to small enough to fail at this point, which might have been an intentional strategy?
Those are all cost cutting measures designed to further increase their quite healthy profits. The factories and jobs are going to countries with cheap labor. This has ben the case regardless of whether the economy was god or bad. Some of the components of their cars are built by Chinese slaves and U.S. prisoners. Some of their c-suite crowd have been caught taking bribes(Joseph Ashton being one).
The following report tells what is really going on with GM financially:
https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/gm-total-revenue-and-breakdown-analysis/#A5
They have lost market share. I’d say mostly to Tesla. Which is ironic, because they could have completely owned the EV market had they pursued offering to the buying public the technology they helped develop with the EV1 when they had zero possible competition.
“will eventually assure that working Americans of modest means can’t afford to go anywhere. What are thy going to do? Take mass transit that doesn’t exist?
And perhaps that is intentional”
I KNEW IT! I KNEW work from home was all a leftist conspiracy plot!!
Work from home is a privilege most working people don’t have. I’m one of the lucky ones that does.
Well if they can’t drive or ride to work and they can’t afford to live close enough to walk, then what? Bikes?
Most of this country is completely unbikeable. Most areas can be described a stroad-laden shithole dotted with chain stores, often without so much as sidewalks, designed to deliberately encourage expensive car ownership and use by making walking and biking dangerous and time-consuming, and by deliberately neglecting the availability of useful public transportation.
Then there’s inclement weather.
I built my one-seater as a way to get around this, but realistically, that is not an option for probably 99% of the people that need a vehicle(they’d have to build their own or be sitting on $XX,XXX to have an ebike maker do it for them). I designed it to maintain pace with the automobile traffic even on state highways while retaining safe operating dynamics, but I can’t legally use it in this manner in most of the U.S.(Ebike laws being established in most places). And in a wreck with a brodozer, anyone riding it is probably a goner. I’m also the rolling equivalent of a circus oddity on these roads, a status that very few would want(I merely tolerate it). And I get harassed by police ALL THE TIME. $0.25 to travel 150-200 miles is nice though.
Further, as more working people are being priced out of car ownership, ebikes are becoming more popular, and so too are government efforts to ban, restrict, tax, license, insure and otherwise regulate them so that the existing established parasites can keep extracting money out of peoples’ wallets and negate the viability of these car alternatives. End stage crony-capitalism in action. A chain of industries like to bitch and moan about “entitled” poor people getting something for free, even if it is help that they need to literally survive, yet simultaneously these industries pay lobbyists to use government to enact rules to assure these industries’ continued extraction of money, feeling entitled to money from working people, many of whom are paid so little they rely on government “gimme-dats” just to eat and have a roof over their head, in spite of often working a job. Rules that no one gets to vote on, yet 99% of the population is expected to follow(while law enforcement will generally look the other way when it coms to those of privilege and/or the legal system will allow them to buy their way out of trouble).
Interesting times…
Interesting that Chinese companies still can either just copy or are not able to create a harmonious design, despite all the money and brainpower
Appears that design is less important than market share and price in the low end to mainstream segments.
Design is for luxury.
Which all seems fairly reasonable to me.
BYD has been building electric transit buses for LA Metro service at a union plant in Southern California since 2015.
To stay eligible for federal dollars and meet Buy America rules around Chinese ownership, BYD’s US transit buses recently were spun into a company called RIDE (backronym: Real Innovation Delivered with Excellence). Exact same buses, new name. I won’t pretend to understand the politics or business structure here.
http://www.ride.co
“DIRE” sounds more appropriate to me
I think Tesla should be concerned about BYD. They have the infrastructure, the choices, and good sales reps. That’s a big deal. Tesla also is so new that the owner loyalty is only strong with the startup cultists. (I mean this in the nicest way.) Volvo, SAAB, Subaru, and Saturn all have their rabid fans but were around for a lot longer than Tesla. (maybe not Saturn) They had generations of fans established. Tesla is the new kid and now BYD is even newer.
You can include Saturn, sales started in 1990 for the 1991 model year. Production ended in the fall of 2009 for a very short 2010 model year, and the division and its dealer network were all officially shut down during 2010, so Saturn made it 20 years.
Tesla’s first model went on sale in 2008, so they’re at just 16 years so far.
Thanks for that. I sold Saturns for a little bit and didn’t want to seem presumptuous against the more established brands. Also, Bob Lutz was wrong about axing Saturn. Chevrolet is it’s own brand but is no Saturn.
Eh, Saturn sales peaked in 1996, when they had only one model (a low margin compact) and never reached that high again, even with a bigger, more diverse model range, and that was also the only year the division turned a profit.
It was a pet project of Roger Smith, as part of his complete top to bottom restructuring and rebuilding of GM during the 1980s, which brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy by the early ’90s and left the business riddled with legacy problems that continued to drag it down until finally collapsing for real in 2009. The S-Series was originally conceived as a Chevy model in the ’80s before Smith siezed on the idea of spinning it off into its own new brand, but it likely would have made GM a lot more money, or at least lost a lot less, if that hadn’t happened
I will agree that the styling was bland and that it may have been a pet project, but Saturn bore the hatred of the rest of GM for its difference from its union contract to its build structure. Corporate GM did everything it could to starve and kill Saturn from the start.
GM spent $18 billion on Saturn between 1985 and 2009, granted, a couple billion was for the new manufacturing plant that’s still in use, but the vast majority of it was pissed away for no real benefit to the company. Pontiac was still selling nearly 600,000 cars a year in the mid 1990s, about double what Saturn did in it’s best year around then, and had a long track record of past success. Maybe that brand wouldn’t have declined as much as it did in its latter years if GM had invested some of those billions there instead. Or, what if they put half of it into Cadillac? How much better and more competitive might their product line have been in the 80s/90s/00s with an extra $9 billion in R&D funds?
By the turn of the 21st century, if not earlier, GM had too few resources available to adequately support all of its brands, any money spent on one was money that wasn’t available for another, they needed to put limited funds into areas that were the safest bets. Saturn and Saab were not safe bets, but they still continued to suck money anyway
No argument here. Another one of my pet peeves is that we never got a second gen Fiero.
GM killed the Fiero when a V6 prototype was demonstrated that was faster than the Corvette at half the projected MSRP of the Corvette. They’d have sold a crap ton of them, but then they’d have likely sold less Corvettes.
It was also an easy chunk of the business to shed during the bankruptcy. All the Saturn dealers were standalone, so selling it off (to Penske) was an option, less so with brands that lived under the same roof with others like Pontiac.
They wouldn’t have achieved the following they did under an existing brand and the car itself probably would have been quite different, but long-term it would have made more sense to do something to actually improve the small/compact car offerings in the existing brands. Come to think of it 80s/90s GM was not unlike BYD as described in this article, just adding new models and keeping old ones around with minimal updates. Not just the number of small car lines, the A-bodies sticking around too because they actually sold after the W-body arrived, and that was arguably a bigger flub – 7 billion for a product that wasn’t even competitive on its arrival.
Speaking as someone who used a Saturn SL2 as a daily driver for 16 years: when Saturn became nothing more than a lineup of badge-engineered copies with absolutely no unique character or value from their stablemates it needed to go. But if GM resurrected the nameplate as reliable and affordable EVs I might just be in for another stint of ownership.
Saturn totally could have sold the EV1 back in the 1990s.
I don’t think it’s Tesla that’s worried about BYD. Push coms to shove, thy could build a car to compete, even if they really don’t want to. Instead of the $25k 200+ mil range sedan, we got the Cybertruck. I think it’s GM, Ford, Stellantis, Honda, Toyota, VAG, and their ilk that are worried about BYD. The American market is saturated with new car options that are entirely unaffordable for most working people, with no inexpensive alternatives, while the used car market slowly dwindles in available stock of economically repairable cars and becomes ever more expensive.
If BYD could get into the U.S., they would be that inexpensive alternative. But the C-suite assholes are greedy and do not went to give up their oversized compensation.
Tesla needs to be worried to the extent that they sell in 36 different countries and will still have to face the competition everywhere else, even if tariffs keep it out of the US.
What I think Tesla is worried about is that if they build a car that can compete with BYD, it will by necessity be much cheaper than and it will compete with Tesla’s existing lineup, thus it will cannibalize sales from more profitable vehicles.
The other automakers have the same issue, which is why inexpensive cars are no longer offered in the USA. By virtue of being available, inexpensive new cars that were designed to be desirable drive margins down. The industry has gotten used to relying upon the concept of “price discrimination” to peg costs of desirable vehicles much higher than their production cost when they can get away with it. They also spend billions of dollars to deliberately manipulate and steer consumer tastes towards the more resource-hungry, inefficient, and ostentatious. Were there any meaningful competition in the industry, this would be impossible. Enter BYD, which threatens to provide such meaningful competition, and is precisely the threat to this status quo that we need.
So naturally, the established legacy car makers lobby the U.S. government to keep that meaningful competition out. And then they send their PR hacks out to gaslight the public and use bought politicians as ass-branded company spokes-people to spread the message of how “Chinese car makers uses slave/prison labor” or “Chinese car makers spy on their users and sell the data off and/or give it to governments” or “Chinese car makers put profits ahead of safety and quality in effort to boost margins”. While all true, left unsaid is that the other automakers that have established themselves within the USA do all the same shit. And I agree it’s a problem, but no one in power wants to address it when the established companies do all the same crap and pay the politicians to never address it on their part. And in the best of circumstances, it’s hypocritical. In reality, the current automotive and transportation zeitgeist is bankrupting Americans and causing them misery, in effort to extract every last cent from them, and the existing rules and regulations exist to make sure it isn’t upended. These corporations are using the force of government to assure themselves a continued revenue stream, at everyone’s expense. This isn’t exactly new, but the problem has certainly metastasized into something completely unsustainable.
Of course, nature, in its strict adherence to mathematical principles, bats last… They can keep BYD out of the USA, but they can’t make people spend money that they don’t have or force them to get a loan for the overpriced new vehicles available today. And this is especially the case with the overpriced/inefficient EVs saturating the market that are currently built with planned obsolescence in mind.
If the US government were REALLY serious about getting people into EVs, they’d allow BYD in, or alternatively, have a “come to Jesus” moment with the legacy automakers and craft rules that would force them to offer an inexpensive, repairable, desirable car at the BYD Seagull’s price point. The technology has been there for a long time.
But that’s not what this(IMO much needed) transition to EVs is about… It’s an effort to expand upon an existing grift and extract even more money from people, damned be the costs to everyone who needs transportation tasked with financially supporting it or to the environment. And when it fails, the EV technology, and not the decision the automakers themselves made regarding it, will be assigned the blame, adding yet more ammunition to the nonsensical/stupid culture war around EVs.