Elon Musk’s Tesla is poised to lose its spot as the world’s top-selling electric vehicle to a lesser-known Chinese-made competitor, according to reports.
BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, is expected to surpass Tesla in worldwide sales before the quarter ends on Dec. 31 — a growing sign of China stepping on the gas in the race for global domination of the auto industry, Bloomberg reported.
The Warren Buffet-backed carmaker is zipping into pole position largely by undercutting Tesla’s hefty price tag.
For instance, Tesla’s fully electric midsize SUV, the Model Y, costs about $65,400, while BYD’s Atto 3 sells for between $48,880 and $51,011 depending on the battery size.
BYD also offers higher-volume models that cost much less than what Tesla charges for its cheapest Model 3 sedan in China.
In the last quarter, the company sold 431,600 vehicles — just 3,500 fewer than Tesla delivered.
“The competitive landscape of the auto industry has changed,” Bridget McCarthy, head of China operations for Shenzhen-based hedge fund Snow Bull Capital, which has invested in both BYD and Tesla, told Bloomberg.
“It’s no longer about the size and legacy of auto companies; it’s about the speed at which they can innovate and iterate. BYD began preparing long ago to be able to do this faster than anyone thought possible, and now the rest of the industry has to race to catch up.”
However, US shoppers won’t find many BYD passenger cars on US roads.
Aside from targeting China’s massive population, the company currently ships EVs to Mexico and Costa Rica in North American and select European markets that include the UK, Germany and Norway.
The vehicles are also available in Singapore, Thailand, the UAE, Japan, Australia and Brazil.
Founded by Wang Chuanfu in 1995 as a maker of rechargeable batteries, the Shenzhen-based conglomerate diversified into consumer electronics, cellphones and, finally, electric vehicles in 2008.
Musk had initially scoffed at the upstart rival.
“Have you seen their cars?” he laughed in a 2011 TV interview that recently resurfaced.
However, the mogul changed his tune earlier this year, admitting in an X post that BYD’s “cars are highly competitive these days.”
Buffett never underestimated the brand.
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway invested about $230 million for an almost 10% stake in BYD, which has since soared roughly 35-fold, to around $8 billion, according to Bloomberg.
In recent years, the Chinese automaker has also lured top talent away from other luxury car companies, including Ferrari’s head of exterior design, a top designer for Mercedes-Benz and Wolfgang Egger, who joined as design chief in 2016 — a role he previously held at Audi and Alfa Romeo, Bloomberg reported.
Though the gap between BYD and Tesla is widening in China, Bloomberg said that replicating a runaway success in the US could be tricky.
BYD has started making some inroads in the US, opening a manufacturing facility in Lancaster, Calif., where electric buses and motor coaches are made in the 556,000-square-foot facility.
Analysts at Bernstein are projecting BYD to bring in $112 billion next year, according to Bloomberg — a hair below the $114 billion in sales Tesla is projected to rake in despite a recent drop in sales growth.
In the third quarter ended Sept. 30, Tesla produced 435,000 cars — down from 466,000 in the second quarter.
Gordon Johnson, the CEO of GLJ Research and a longtime Tesla skeptic, told The Post following the release of Tesla’s third-quarter earnings that the company’s financial metrics looked increasingly “fugazy.”
“I don’t want to say Tesla is going out of business, but it’s grossly overvalued,” Johnson said.
The Post has sought comment from BYD and Tesla.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
