CNN reports:

In the world of electric vehicles, there’s a Chinese company outdoing Elon Musk’s Tesla. And it’s just getting started.

BYD, the Shenzhen-based Chinese EV champion, eclipsed Tesla in annual sales last year. Last week, it unveiled a revolutionary battery charging technology that it says adds 250 miles of range in five minutes, outpacing Tesla’s Superchargers, which take 15 minutes to add 200 miles. And last month, BYD launched “God’s Eye,” an advanced driver-assistance system rivaling Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature, at no extra cost for most of its cars.

They’re just three examples of how BYD has been pulling ahead of Tesla. The company once laughed off by Musk is now effectively outperforming Tesla in sales, innovation and price competitiveness.

“They’re not resting on their laurels, as you can see from the God’s Eye announcement and from the fast-charging announcement,” Tu Le, founder and managing director of the consultancy firm Sino Auto Insights, told CNN. “They’re content to push the envelope and set the pace for the whole world.”

Having dominated its home market of China, the world’s largest auto market, BYD is starting to expand globally, with notable exceptions like the United States, a country it is effectively barred from due to 100% tariffs on its passenger cars. [Continue reading…]

Forbes reports:

Tesla is in a world of hurt. Sales in California, its main market in the U.S., plummeted 31% in January from a year ago. European numbers are even worse, dropping 43% in the year’s first two months. And in China, by far its most important market for profitability, Tesla sales crashed 29% through February. Its stock has tanked, dropping 34% this year. A backlash has grown against part-time CEO Elon Musk–who also leads five other companies–with protests at Tesla stores and the torching of vehicles as he carries out a clumsy attempt to slash government workers and spending as Trump’s DOGE master.

But things are about to get worse.

Falling sales indicate that the company’s financial health is fundamentally faltering as competitors are surging, particularly rival BYD. The Chinese EV and battery maker for the first time topped Tesla in revenue in 2024 and is on pace to leave it in the dust as the global leader in electric vehicle sales this year. Tesla’s brand is becoming toxic in California, which has nurtured it since the Roadster arrived in 2008. It’s even failing on the technology front, with BYD outpacing it with a super-fast charging battery system and Waymo dominating in self-driving cars, which Musk has bet the company on.

The worst by far, though, is what’s happening to Tesla in China, where it opened its Shanghai plant in 2019. That plant, the first in China wholly owned by a foreign carmaker, marked a turning point for Tesla, fueling a massive sales spike and pushing it into the black consistently thanks to low-cost Chinese labor, parts and logistics. But a decline in that market, where Tesla has seen consistent growth up until this year, threatens to narrow its already shrinking profit margins. A big reason for slower sales: China’s domestic EV companies are starting to beat Tesla on, well, everything. [Continue reading…]