Chinese manufacturer BYD surpasses Tesla as the leading EV maker
BYD has surpassed Tesla as the world's leading seller of electric vehicles, and other Chinese manufacturers may soon follow suit as they lead the electric revolution at the cost of their Western counterparts. BYD said on Monday that it sold a record 526,000 battery-only vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2023, while Tesla announced that it delivered a record 484,500 electric vehicles in the same period.
Chinese manufacturers such as BYD and SAIC Motor Corp are making significant gains in a market dominated by more known brands such as Toyota Motor Corp, Volkswagen AG etc. China currently competes with Japan for the global lead in passenger automobile exports, having surpassed the United States, South Korea, and Germany in recent years. As of October of this year, 1.3 million of the 3.6 million automobiles transported from China were electric.
BYD was well positioned to profit as a rare carmaker that also produced its own batteries. It was the first Chinese lithium-ion supplier to Motorola Trademark Holdings LLC and Nokia Corp in the early 2000s before entering the automobile sector. To ramp up production before customers accept EVs, the business chose vehicle categories that would require a large number of cells.
Despite strong sales, the firm does not presently sell its automobiles in the United States because of hefty import duties. BY sold nearly 400,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the fourth quarter, surpassing Tesla in sales of just electric vehicles. In the previous year, the brand sold nearly 3 million electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.
According to analysts, BYD's development may be attributed to its basic business - batteries. They are among the most costly components of an EV, and producing them in-house saves BYD a significant amount of money. Many of BYD's rivals rely on third-party battery producers.
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