alt Hacker News200% YoY growth in Europe. Surpassed Ford in global auto sales, selling only EVs. Largest private employer in China. EV printer go brrr.
BYD uses aggressive discounts in bid to make Germany its leading European market - https://www.autonews.com/byd/ane-byd-discounts-germany-sales... - February 17th, 2026
China's BYD Overtakes Ford in Global Sales for the First Time - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-byd-overtakes-ford-glo... - February 12th, 2026
BYD's European registrations surge 270% in 2025 while Tesla slips 27% - https://cnevpost.com/2026/01/27/byd-european-registrations-s... - Jan 27th, 2026
BYD Sold Nearly Three Times As Many Cars As Tesla In Europe - https://www.carscoops.com/2025/11/byd-sold-nearly-3-times-as... - November 26th, 2025
The size of BYD's factory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228138 - November 2024 (615 comments)
Note that BYD doesn't just make BEVs. They're quite big in plug-in hybrids, which aren't in that data. They apparently sold 175k cars in Europe last year. A breakdown of BEV vs PHEV doesn't seem to be available, but 75k of those were one particular PHEV, so it's at most 100k BEVs.
VW AG sold 750k BEVs in Europe last year: https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en/press-releases/volkswage... (see the PDF).
Not saying that BYD is completely irrelevant, but the media overplays them. Presumably because BYD vs Tesla is an interesting narrative, even if the actual figures have both of those as small players in BEVs (at least for cars; BYD _is_ quite big in electric buses), with the real race being between VW AG and Stellantis. VW AG vs Stellantis is a painfully boring narrative.