Five years. That’s how long it took China to go from sixth in global auto exports to first, shipping more vehicles than the United States and Japan combined. No company tells that story more clearly than BYD. The Shenzhen-based carmaker started as a battery startup, sold its first cars to an industry that laughed openly at the idea, and then compounded relentlessly: close to a million employees, 120,000 engineers, and an average of 52 patents filed every working day. In 2025, for the first time, BYD beat Tesla in total electric vehicle sales and claimed the title of the world’s leading EV maker. Bloomberg’s Tom Mackenzie reports from Paris, where the company staged a lavish launch for its latest luxury model.
The Paris event was deliberate. BYD’s executive vice president Stella Li, who helped engineer the company’s transformation from a battery operation into a global automaker, was at the centre of it. She joined BYD when the company had 20 employees and a starting investment of $350,000, set up its first international office in Hong Kong in 1997, and arrived in Europe in 1999. The premium Denza brand launched its Z9 GT at the Paris event, a car capable of 0-100 km/h in 2.7 seconds that, in China, carries a price point the hosts describe as comparable to a Subaru Outback. Ford CEO Jim Farley told Wall Street Week that seeing BYD’s operation up close was the most humbling experience of his professional life. Their cost structure and vehicle quality, he said, are far ahead of what he sees in the West.
BYD’s special adviser Alfredo Altavilla, formerly head of Fiat Chrysler’s European operations and a close aide to the late CEO Sergio Marchionne, says the company’s goal is to be one of the key global players in the industry, and declines to name a volume target because he believes it won’t be believed. International sales were around a million units last year; the 2026 target of 1.5 million, he says, will be exceeded without difficulty. A 100% tariff introduced under President Biden has kept BYD out of US dealerships, and trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing are ongoing. At home in China, the picture is harder: BYD posted roughly a 20% drop in year-on-year profit in a recent quarter as a domestic price war deepened. Their answer is next-generation battery and charging technology that, per Li, will keep competitors several years behind. Bloomberg EV analyst Ryan Fisher calls BYD’s overall growth simply “explosive” and notes that in the EU’s subsidy investigation, BYD actually landed on the lower end of state support compared to some domestic rivals.
Bottom line: The clip of Elon Musk laughing at BYD on Bloomberg in 2011 has not aged well. Five years after going from nearly nowhere to the top of the global EV sales chart, BYD is now the story the rest of the auto industry is scrambling to respond to.