A Chinese electric-vehicle maker. It is China's biggest EV manufacturer, the world's biggest maker of electric vehicles and the second-largest battery producer, behind CATL, which has more than double its production volume. BYD is vertically integrated, controlling everything from mining rights for minerals to building its own batteries and owning cargo ships for transporting cars to foreign markets. It sold 4.3m cars in 2024, of which China accounted for about 90%. In 2025 BYD overtook Tesla in worldwide sales; more than a fifth of its cars were bought abroad, up from a tenth in 2024. BYD plans to sell more than half of its cars overseas, especially in Latin America and Europe, by 2030. In April 2025 BYD sold more EVs in Europe than Tesla for the first time, according to Jato Dynamics, a research firm—despite the EU's increased tariffs on Chinese EVs. BYD hopes to be the largest EV-maker in Europe by 2030.
In March 2025 BYD announced a battery that can provide 400km of driving with five minutes of charging; the following month CATL unveiled one offering 520km on the same charge time.
On April 8th 2026 BYD is set to unveil a 1,500kW drive-through charger in Paris, a large overhead gantry from which recharging cables descend. When plugged into the Denza Z9GT, BYD's premium model, the car's 122kWh "Blade Battery" can be boosted from 10% to 70% capacity in five minutes; a full charge takes nine minutes. BYD says its Blade Battery uses cathodes and anodes engineered at the molecular level to increase ion flow, in part using thin components to reduce internal resistance. BYD aims to install these chargers globally and expects 20,000 to be operational in China by the end of 2026. Most existing public fast-chargers operate at 100-350kW. BYD says the battery will have enhanced durability despite the added strain of fast charging.
In 2019 BYD spent 10bn yuan ($1.4bn) establishing a large, high-tech battery factory in Chongqing. Other battery-makers followed its example, helping Chongqing re-emerge as one of China's top car-producing cities after a slump in petrol-car output.
In 2024 BYD opened a factory in Jizzakh, Uzbekistan, and is spending more than $1bn to build a factory in West Java, Indonesia, that will produce up to 150,000 cars a year.
In summer 2024 BYD offered a $1bn investment in Turkey, where it plans to open a factory in Manisa. President Erdogan attended the signing ceremony. The factory is supposed to produce 150,000 cars per year and was expected to open in 2026, but as of mid-2025 construction had barely begun—reportedly because BYD was hedging its bets while the EU and China negotiate their EV tariff dispute. Turkey's customs-union agreement with the EU allows cars built there to be exported to the bloc tariff-free, making it an attractive backdoor, though EU anti-dumping rules could impose punitive tariffs if imported parts account for 60% or more of a car's value unless assembly adds over 25% to manufacturing costs.
BYD is building a $4.5bn factory in Hungary. It is not planning to run the plant at full capacity—an apparent reflection of how much cheaper it is to make the same cars in China.
In April 2025 India's commerce minister said India would not approve BYD's application to invest $1bn in an Indian joint venture. BYD has been scouting for factory sites in South Africa.
Even BYD, China's most successful EV firm, is struggling to pay its suppliers amid the country's overcapacity crisis.
In the second quarter of 2025 BYD reported a 30% drop in net profits, even as revenues grew by 14%—a sign of the margin compression caused by China's brutal car-industry price war. Stella Li, a senior BYD executive, has said there are "too many" carmakers in China, that close to 100 need to be "pushed out" and that even if 20 remain that may be too many.
On February 12th 2026 China's antitrust watchdog published rules banning the sale of cars for less than the cost of manufacturing them, in an effort to rein in the country's long-running price war fuelled by excess production capacity. It is unclear how strictly this will be enforced.
In May 2025 BYD slashed the cost of 22 electric and hybrid models. The starting price of its cheapest model, the Seagull, an electric hatchback, fell to 55,800 yuan ($7,700)—down from an already astonishingly low 73,800 yuan when it was unveiled just two years earlier. In November 2024 BYD pressed suppliers to cut prices by 10%. Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor, one of China's largest carmakers, called the industry unhealthy and warned that "the Evergrande of the automobile industry already exists, but it just hasn't exploded yet."
BYD has invested in AgiBot, a Chinese humanoid-robot startup.
BYD, along with Xpeng and other Chinese carmakers, showed electric vehicles at Germany's Munich motor show in September 2025, announcing expansions that made clear Europe is the main target in their worldwide export blitz. Between 2021 and 2024 the number of cars shipped abroad from China quadrupled, taking China past Japan to become the world's largest car exporter.
"Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a cockatoo."