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08 September 2023
China’s BYD, or Build Your Dreams
“It’s a unique sensation, a feeling of belonging to a vibrant and emerging community,..”
Now that it’s the juggernaut in the Chinese EV scene, BYD is looking to grow its overseas sales and improve its margins. A Chinese government-affiliated think tank estimated the company’s profit per car sold was only around 12% that of Tesla last year. The Atto 3, launched in 2022, was the company’s first model specifically developed for markets outside China. The car is now on sale in India, Japan, Sweden, Australia, Brazil, and dozens of other countries.
The Atto 3’s interior, created by a former Mercedes-Benz designer, has what BYD describes as a “sporty” look, with the dashboard curves representing muscle fibers and the air vents mimicking dumbbells. The company calls the car’s design “avant-garde.” Reviewers have said it is “quirky,” “a little bit mad,” and “borders on surreal.”
Despite some skepticism, the Atto 3 has been a modest sales success thanks to its low price, roomy interior, and comfortable ride. In Thailand, Singapore, Israel, and New Zealand, the car holds or has held the title of top-selling EV model in the past year.
. . .BYD is itself a trailblazer. The company only began making cars in 2003, and was one of the first to use electric power-trains and phase out purely gas-powered models. As the world shifts to EVs, that strategy is paying off. In the first quarter of 2023, BYD was responsible for 12% of all passenger car sales in China, ending Volkswagen’s 15-year reign as the country’s most popular car brand. If you include plug-in hybrid vehicles, BYD is already the world’s best-selling EV company.
Now, BYD is trying to expand that success beyond China’s borders. Since 2021, the company has launched models in 52 markets, invested in factories and a lithium processing facility abroad, and acquired an entire fleet of cargo ships to deliver those cars around the world. The company’s global rollout, however, has been mixed so far.
Thailand, for example, has been a triumph for BYD. Thanks to high fuel costs and subsidized EV sales, it is Southeast Asia’s biggest market for fully electric cars, accounting for more than three-quarters of the region’s EV sales. Although BYD only started selling cars in Thailand last November, the Atto 3 was the country’s best-selling EV for the first half of 2023.
In other parts of the world, growth has been slower. Even though BYD roughly quadrupled the number of cars it sold outside China in July 2023 compared to a year earlier, that still accounts for only 7% of the company’s total sales. Compare that to Tesla, the world’s biggest seller of pure EV vehicles, which sells about 60% of its cars outside the U.S.
BYD faces major obstacles in overseas markets where EV powerhouse Tesla, legacy brands like Volkswagen, and local EV upstarts alike have proved hard to dislodge. BYD also needs to navigate skepticism around Chinese companies — especially in the U.S., Europe, and India, the world’s three biggest car markets after China.
“You’ve got two things happening at the same time: enormous upside potential in developing markets, and enormous obstacles and hurdles to clear in order to be successful in the developed markets,” Michael Dunne, founder of EV consultancy ZoZoGo, told Rest of World.
“It’s unlikely for BYD to dominate the global market as it does at home,” Zhang Xiang, an auto analyst and visiting professor at Huanggang Polytechnic College in Hubei, China, told Rest of World. “BYD might be leading in EV technology, but it doesn’t have answers to all of its problems.”
Analysts say the secret to BYD’s success is its battery technology, which allows it to compete on both price and performance. The Atto 3, for example, is equipped with BYD’s own “blade battery,” which uses an innovative structure to increase the energy density of its lithium iron phosphate technology. This way, it can compete with batteries that use the more energy-dense but also more expensive lithium, cobalt, and nickel. The blade batteries work so well that even car makers like Tesla have started using them. . .
The car’s biggest selling point is its price. In Thailand, an Atto 3 costs almost half as much as the similar-sized Tesla Model Y. BYD is introducing even lower-priced models, beating competitors to price points they can’t reach. Elon Musk first promised his company would make a $25,000 EV in 2020, but has yet to unveil — much less sell — such a model. Meanwhile, Thai consumers can buy a BYD Dolphin, a compact hatchback with a range of 410 kilometers that launched in July, for about $20,000.
At the BYD Metromobile dealership in Bangkok, the Dolphin is a hit with young drivers, salesperson Iyapad Siriamarasakul told Rest of World. The dealership, located next to a highway in the city’s Taling Chan district, had sold more than a 100 Dolphins in just one month, and has a waitlist of some 350 more buyers. . .
About a decade ago, BYD began making inroads abroad with its buses-and-taxis-first strategy, supplying fleets from Hong Kong to London. In the U.S., the company opened an electric bus assembly plant in California in 2013, and secured tens of millions of dollars in public contracts.
The future of that type of deal is now in question, since a 2021 law banned U.S. federal transit funding from going to companies linked to China. The U.S. government has also ruled out tax breaks for cars equipped with Chinese-made battery components.
Still, in an interview this April, BYD executive vice president Stella Li hailed the bus factory in California as an example of U.S.-China cooperation, claiming it as proof that BYD could build a company “that is more American than Americans.” BYD says it has more than 1,000 vehicles on the road or in production in the U.S.
The Atto 3 or its other consumer vehicles have yet to appear on U.S. shores. In a written statement, BYD told Rest of World it was “still in the process of making the final decision” regarding selling passenger cars in the United States. The Wire China reported in June that BYD appears to be spinning off the U.S. business under a new brand, Ride, to distance it from its Chinese roots. Many China-founded companies that do business in the U.S., such as TikTok and Shein, have adopted similar strategies in attempts to deflect anti-Chinese scrutiny.
In India, too, China’s geopolitical tensions make it difficult for BYD to gain a foothold. The company first built a factory in the country in 2007 to manufacture batteries and phone components, and later started a joint venture with a local partner to make electric buses. In 2022, BYD entered the consumer market with two EVs: the Atto 3 and the e6, a multi-purpose vehicle. Final vehicle assembly takes place inside Indian facilities, a typical move to lower import taxes.
But the rocky Indo-Chinese political relationship presents its own challenges. In 2020, the Indian government made any foreign direct investment from border countries subject to government approval — a move widely assumed to be aimed at China. This past July, India rejected a proposal by BYD and an Indian partner company to set up new car-manufacturing facilities. A government official told The Economic Times that there had been “security concerns.” Last year, Great Wall Motor also shelved a $1 billion entry plan after failing to obtain regulatory approval. “It’s not that they [BYD] don’t have a market,” Puneet Gupta, an expert on the Indian automotive market at S&P Global Mobility, told Rest of World. “The problem is how they could invest.” In the first seven months of 2023, BYD made up just 3% of India’s EV sales.
Across other markets, BYD will have to contend with stronger competition as it loses its first-mover advantage. In Thailand, one reason BYD has been successful is that the Japanese brands, which have historically dominated the country’s car market, have been slow to introduce electric models, according to Kunat Tharasrisuthi, a Bangkok-based auto analyst with intelligence firm GlobalData.
BYD already struggles in competitive markets. In Norway, where it began selling passenger EVs in 2021, none of its cars ranked among the top 20 electric models in sales figures this past June. Petter Haugneland, assistant secretary general at the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, which represents EV owners, told Rest of World EV buyers in Norway are no longer first adopters curious to try new brands. Rather, they tend to be everyday consumers who prefer legacy brands with longstanding support networks, he said. In the first half of 2023, Chinese car brands’ market share in Norway dropped from 9.9% to 3.9% from the same period last year. The country’s current best-selling Chinese models are from Volvo and MG, both originally European brands now owned by Chinese companies.
Still, BYD remains a widely feared global newcomer. “BYD is very, very strong,” Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume said during an event at the Shanghai auto show in April.
“They are designing, engineering, and manufacturing globally competitive vehicles,” Tu Le, founder of Sino Auto Insights consultancy, told Rest of World. “That should scare the shit out of every foreign automaker because no one can touch a $15,000 or $18,000 electric vehicle and be profitable. No one, not even Tesla.”
BYD founder Wang is not shy about sharing his patriotic ambitions for his company. In a 2021 interview on a Tencent Video program, he was asked why some of BYD’s EVs are named after Chinese dynasties. Wang recalled how he had felt humiliated when immigration officers questioned him as he was entering the U.S. “It was as if I just wanted to stick around in America. Why would I do that?” Wang said. “I came to America to help with your employment.”
At an August event celebrating the production of BYD’s 5 millionth battery-powered car, Wang choked up recounting how the company had struggled to stay afloat just a few years earlier. But now that the EV era was here, Chinese carmakers should work together to build world-class brands and “demolish the old order,” Wang said. “Luckily, spring has finally arrived for us.”
13 May 2024
BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” could be a nightmare for the U.S. auto industry.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing says in a paper that government subsidized Chinese EVs “could end up being an extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector.”
A tiny, low-priced electric car called the Seagull has American automakers and politicians trembling
- Tariffs on imported Chinese vehicles will keep the Seagull out of America for now, and it likely would sell for more than 12 grand if imported.
Inside a huge garage near Detroit, a company called Caresoft Global tore apart and reassembled a bright green Seagull that its China office purchased and shipped to the U.S.
Company President Terry Woychowski, a former chief engineer on General Motors' pickup trucks, said the car is a “clarion call” for the U.S. industry, which is years behind China in designing low-cost EVs.
After the teardown, Woychowski said he was left wondering if U.S. automakers can adjust. “Things will have to change in some radical ways in order to be able to compete,” he said.
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