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nsurance agent Wedwiwat Srimora used to drive his father’s hand-me-down 2007 Toyota, crisscrossing Bangkok and beyond to meet with potential clients. But last year, fed up with his fuel bills, he decided to go electric. After months of research, Wedwiwat opted for a brand that had only recently launched in Thailand: China’s BYD, or Build Your Dreams. In March, he bought a green Atto 3, a medium-sized SUV with an estimated range of 410 kilometers. He never even considered a Tesla, which would have cost him almost twice as much.
Wedwiwat arrived at the dealership early in the morning to pick up his new car. He turned on the engine, opened the sunroof, and tried the lights. Then, he waited. At 9:09 a.m. sharp — nine is an auspicious number in Thailand — Wedwiwat inched the car forward, marking the moment when the Atto 3 became his.
The 32-year-old now spends hours every day in his new ride. His fuel costs are a third of what he paid before. “I must say I like every aspect of my new vehicle,” he told Rest of World.
Wedwiwat particularly enjoys the camaraderie that comes with being an EV owner — he likes chatting with other EV drivers while charging his Atto 3. “It’s a unique sensation, a feeling of belonging to a vibrant and emerging community,” he said.
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.
BYD’s battery success is tied directly to the company’s founder, Wang Chuanfu. Born in 1966 into a poor family in China’s eastern province of Anhui, Wang graduated with a degree in metallurgical physical chemistry and landed a job at a state-run research institute. In 1993, the institute dispatched him to Shenzhen to manage an affiliated company that produced batteries. Two years later, Wang quit and launched his own battery company: Biyadi. The name didn’t mean anything — only later did the company come up with the tagline “Build Your Dreams.”
The company was scrappy. Instead of importing automated production lines, BYD employed people to hand-build batteries for a fraction of the cost — Wang once remarked that the maintenance cost of one welding robot was equal to the wages of 10 Chinese workers. Cheap labor made BYD one of the world’s largest battery manufacturers for home appliances, toys, and phones, supplying brands including Motorola and Nokia.
In the early 2000s, Wang identified EVs as a prime growth opportunity. The Chinese government was also keen on EV development: Officials figured that the shift away from internal combustion cars presented a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Chinese companies to leapfrog foreign carmakers.
But it was a serious gamble. At the time, it wasn’t clear electric vehicles would ever go mainstream, and even less clear whether BYD, a battery maker, would be the company to make it happen. Despite opposition from the rest of BYD’s management, Wang acquired a troubled state-owned carmaker. In the days following the announcement, in January 2003, BYD shares plunged by over a quarter. U.S. investors called Wang, demanding he cancel the deal. But he was adamant. “I have decided that the second half of my life would be about cars,” Wang said at the time. He added that he was just learning to drive.
BYD built up its automaking expertise by tearing apart industry-leading cars and mimicking the designs of popular brands like Toyota. In 2008, after releasing a few internal combustion models, BYD launched the world’s first mass-produced plug-in hybrid car, the F3DM, which used the company’s own batteries. Wang had limited expectations for the car, but wanted to demonstrate the company’s commitment to EVs. This ambition attracted attention: Earlier that year, prominent investor Warren Buffett had acquired a 10% stake in BYD.
In addition to battery prowess, BYD owes much of its rise to support from the Chinese government. A lack of charging infrastructure meant BYD initially struggled to sell its battery-powered cars to regular consumers. Instead, it sold electric buses and taxis to governments eager to promote sustainability, and even took part in monorail train projects. BYD’s home city Shenzhen bought its first 200 electric buses from the company in 2011.
BYD appeared to work closely with the Chinese government to spur EV adoption. In 2014, the State Council — China’s cabinet — published a 30-point guideline on promoting the EV industry that included offering subsidies and tax breaks. Wang told Fortune China in 2020 that about 20 points had been suggested by BYD.
China has since supported EV makers in various ways. In 2021, BYD received 5.87 billion yuan ($820 million) in government subsidies — more than its profits that year. In 2022, the company received nearly twice that amount.
At the same time, many big cities introduced rules limiting the use of internal combustion vehicles to improve air pollution and congestion. Local governments also forced ride-hailing app drivers to switch to electric cars, creating a large market for affordable EVs, including BYD cars.
With these incentives in place, China’s EV market has boomed over the past four years. Among the country’s hundreds of EV manufacturers, BYD is the biggest winner. It offers a wide variety of models, and prices as low as $11,000. “It was as if overnight, every Chinese wanted to buy an EV,” Sun Fangyuan, an auto industry adviser and influencer, told Rest of World. For people with limited budgets, “BYD was basically the only choice,” he said.
Low labor standards have also kept BYD’s costs down. China Labor Watch, a nongovernmental organization headquartered in New York, investigated labor conditions at BYD in 2011 and 2020. It found that the company ran “sweat-shop” factories where assembly line workers earned low wages. Li Qiang, head of China Labor Watch, told Rest of World the conditions at BYD are largely in line with other car and electronics manufacturers in China. But, he said, the company is under less pressure to improve than suppliers of global brands — such as the much-scrutinized Foxconn — as it sells most of its products domestically. BYD did not respond to questions about its labor standards before publication.
Li added that China Labor Watch received calls from the Shenzhen police warning him not to make their findings public. After they did, the police harassed Li’s employees and forced the organization to move out of its Shenzhen office. “We had investigated more than 100 factories in China,” Li said. “But BYD was the only one that led to such harassment.”
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.
Alongkone Saignasith, 51, claims to own just the second Atto 3 to hit the roads in France. He switched from a gas-powered Peugeot to save on fuel costs. When he drove the Atto home for the first time, Saignasith said, his neighbors came over to check it out. At a bakery that afternoon, a curious couple asked to take a look inside, saying they were deciding between a Tesla and an Atto 3. “In France, [BYD] is an unknown brand,” Saignasith said. “When people are now aware, they want to see it in real life. When I drive the car, it’s like a showroom.”
Maryjane O’Donnell, 36, who lives in Ireland’s County Meath, came across BYD in a Google search in May. She bought an Atto 3 because she liked its look. No one around her had heard of the brand at the time, O’Donnell told Rest of World, but she was convinced of BYD’s record of reliability since the company also makes trains and buses. After seeing her car, she said, a friend and a neighbor bought Attos too.
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.
Sitting on one of the showroom sofas, Chanidapa Moranya, a 34-year-old loan analyst, was waiting for her boyfriend to finish test-driving a Dolphin. She’d already decided to buy one. “First I was concerned about the distance it could cover, but nowadays there are many charging stations,” she told Rest of World.
Jutipuk Yungnontard, 40, was at the dealership with her mother and husband to reserve an Atto 3. “I brought my mom to help me pick the color,” she said. “She likes green, but I like white.” Jutipuk sells Japanese daifuku snacks and drives hundreds of kilometers a day making deliveries. She expects the Atto 3 would cut her fuel expenses at least by half.
Jutipuk said she doesn’t have hang-ups about buying a Chinese EV: She was also considering Great Wall Motor’s Ora Good Cat. “[Chinese brands] are good at solving problems and are cheaper,” she said.
On a sunny day in early 2022, a BYD electric school bus coasted up Alhambra Unified School District’s steepest hill with ease. The passengers, drivers for the Californian district, cheered: They were clearly impressed by the demonstration. Samuel Kang, then head of electric school buses at BYD North America, shared a video of the demonstration on LinkedIn. “[The bus] sold itself because it’s such a great product,” he told Rest of World.
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.”