“If Tesla decides to enter a market in Latin America or Southeast Asia, guess who they’re going to have to compete against in every single one of those markets?” said Tu Le, founder of the Beijing-based consultancy Sino Auto Insights. “That’s an advantage to BYD.”
The EV industry has long been a priority for Beijing, which sought to curb China’s reliance on fossil fuels and foreign automakers by supporting domestic firms’ mastery over every part of the EV supply chain. Wang, a chemist, founded BYD in 1995 to make batteries for early laptops and cellphones like the Motorola Razr. Twenty years ago, Wang bought a failed car company with the idea of making batteries for those, too.
At Tesla, Musk focused on making EVs into a flashy aspirational purchase. But at BYD, Wang doubled down on the company’s battery technology. He insisted that BYD’s batteries had become so efficient that if the cars didn’t work out, the company could make batteries for competitors. Today, BYD sells its batteries to both Tesla and Ford.“BYD has always built its own chips and made its own batteries and engineered them themselves,” said Le, of Sino Auto Insights.