Musk Should Be Worried: It’s No Surprise BYD Just Overtook Tesla
Musk’s AI obsession just lost him the EV race.
It’s official. Tesla is no longer the top dog of the EV world. At least in sheer numbers. In 2023, the Chinese EV giant BYD delivered a massive 1.6 million battery-powered electric vehicles. While this is still behind Tesla’s vast 1.84 million delivered EVs in 2023, that isn’t the entire story. You see, in the final quarter of 2023, BYD actually outsold Tesla for the first time. In Q3, Tesla delivered an impressive 484,000 EVs, but BYD delivered a whopping 526,000! As such, BYD is set to outsell Tesla in 2024. But how has a brand mostly constrained to China managed to outsell one of the most dominant brands of the 21st century? Well, it’s all to do with their vastly different approach to growth.
On the surface, BYD and Tesla seem to be very similar companies, only differing in their country of origin. They both lead the global EV race, have proprietary battery technology ahead of everyone else, have industry-leading efficiency and charge speeds, have built their own charger networks, and both build ludicrously fast yet affordable EVs. But dig a little deeper, and you will find they both have polar opposite approaches to growth.
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