BYD Co. Ltd (Build Your Dreams) is a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer. Founded by Wang Chuanfu in February 1995, the BYD company has two major subsidiaries; BYD Electronic and BYD Automobile. BYD company serves its role in manufacturing automobiles, electric bicycles, buses, forklifts, trucks, rechargeable lithium iron phosphate batteries and solar panels.
In the Indian automotive sector, BYD made its official debut in 2016. BYD e6 was the first electric MPV to be launched by the brand in India.
By September 2022, the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer accomplished deliveries of 450 units of the e6 EV MPV to a number of corporate and fleet clients. Recently, BYD launched its new Atto 3 electric SUV on 14th November 2022 priced at Rs 33.99 lakh (ex-showroom).
As reported, the Atto 3 model already received 1500 bookings so far and deliveries are expected to commence in January 2023. This is the second model from BYD car in India after the e6 MPV. In fact, BYD has become the world’s largest EV company by volume.
BYD has sold more electric vehicles than Tesla in 2022
As reported, BYD surpassed Tesla for the world’s most electric car sales in 2022. This statement is based on the sales figures of BYD which include over 3,00,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles sold in the first half of 2022. As claimed by BYD, they have sold 6,38,157 “new energy” passenger vehicles from January to June 2022 which include 3,14,638 plug-in hybrids and 3,23,519 blade battery EVs. In comparison to this, Tesla sold 3,10,048 units in Q1 and 2,54,048 vehicles in Q2 of 2022.
BYD discontinued selling conventional powered cars
Many automakers have planned to eliminate their all-internal-combustion models in the future. On 3rd April 2022, BYD announced an end to the production of combustion engine vehicles. The company also claimed to produce only full electric and heavily electrified plug-in hybrid cars. However, BYD will not thoroughly stop making gasoline engines because smaller and highly efficient engines will be used in plug-in hybrid cars.
Warren Buffett invested in BYD over Tesla
In September 2008, Warren Buffet, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, chose to invest in Chinese company “BYD” over Elon Musk’s “Tesla”. MidAmerican Energy Holdings which is a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. invested about US$230 million for the 10 percent share of BYD at HK$8 per share.
