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I’m not wanting to unduly alarm you, but The Chinese are coming, at least in the form of globalising their production of electric cars, and they want your dollars, pounds, pesos, and euros. The company I'm talking about is called BYD, or Build Your Dreams. Some wag has proffered Bring Your Dollars as a more suitable stab at what BYD stands for. The signs are clear that China is on a roll.
'The company has mainly based its sales in Mainland China but is undertaking rapid expansion into global markets such as the European Union, Southeast Asia and Latin America, with sales hitting over 100,000 per month in March 2022, and was expecting to sell between 1.5 million to 2 million plug-in EVs in 2022, around 3 to 4 times the volume compared to 2021. In 2023, BYD has set goals to reach 3 million sales by the end of the year.'
The burning question on almost everybody’s lips is, how does BYD stack up against such a major player as Tesla? Well, the experts are saying that this year BYD is on track to pass Tesla. This is quite a change since a few years ago when Elon Musk cocked a snook at BYD regarding quality and performance issues. Now Musk has changed his tune and is opining that BYD has made great strides, at least in terms of quality control. These days, Tesla is buying lithium batteries from BYD.
It would also appear that BYD is a much bigger company. Whereas Tesla has approximately 90,000 employees, BYD has about 250,000. In terms of size measured in sales, Tesla is presently the leader with 466,140 units sold and 83 per cent growth year-over-year. BYD is second with 352,163 units sold and a much faster rate of growth at 95 per cent year-over-year. In other words, BYD is catching up with Tesla pretty darn fast.
In the first quarter of this year (2023) BYD delivered 547,917 passenger EVs, including hybrids. This tally surpassed Tesla, which shipped around 422,000 vehicles during the same period.
So much for the sales figures, what about the BYD cars, are they actually any good? The answer is a resounding yes. The cars are competitive with Tesla on range, both will give you about 300 miles on a single charge, but lag in top speed. The BYD can reach a top speed of about 118 mph, whilst the comparable Tesla can hit 155 mph. However, this is academic since both cars’ top speed is way above legal limits, at least in Europe and the USA.
All that being said, according to fellow Medium writer and car geek at large, Will Locket, writing in January, a game changer from BYD was due this year in the form of the BYD Seal. The Seal has already landed on European shores and seems to match the Tesla Model 3 in just about all areas except one, price.
It would appear that BYD has decided to play the long game in the battle for market share and is quite happy to let brand acceptance in Europe take its own time. It is the only way to explain the higher prices than were expected. Potential customers are well-informed about Tesla's promise and product delivery. However, BYD is a relatively unknown quantity and it may take some time for the buying public to take BYD to its collective heart.
So Tesla, at least for the time being, can afford to be relaxed about the arrival of the new kid on the block. But that will not be something they can afford to do in the long run. It is a time then for Tesla to look to the future and plan what they must do to stay ahead of the game further down the line.
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