BYD Has Blockbuster Year While Tesla Stalls

The lunar new year doesn’t occur for another 26 days, but BYD is already in a festive mood.

Despite China’s overall economy coming down with a bad cold last year, its EV companies are still raring to go — and even upstaging the world’s most valuable auto company. Tesla reported its first annual sales drop in over 10 years on Thursday, while its biggest Chinese competitor BYD posted annual sales that comfortably beat expectations.

Stuck in First Gear 

Tesla kicked off 2024 warning that sales growth would not be as gaudy as in years gone by. CEO Elon Musk said in January last year that the company was “between two major growth waves,” and specifically warned that slower growth was to be expected as the company wrestled with the industry-wide problem of lukewarm consumer demand. He didn’t say anything about negative growth, however. Tesla sold 1.79 million vehicles last year, a whisker below the 1.81 million it sold in 2023. 

BYD, meanwhile, beat its own expectations, having set a target of 3.6 million in EV and hybrid sales but hitting 4.3 million. Of course, it’s not an entirely fair comparison, as selling hybrids is a lot easier than selling EVs, and they appear to be a major engine in BYD’s growth machine.

Felipe Muñoz, senior analyst at automotive market research firm JATO, told The Daily Upside that while BYD grew its EV sales 12%, its plug-in hybrid sales climbed 73%. Still, the numbers under the hood are worrying for Tesla, even more so given that if BYD experiences a slowdown in EV sales, hybrids can keep things moving:

• BYD sold 1.76 million EVs in 2024, so about 30,000 off Tesla’s number. In the past, BYD has managed to nudge past Tesla in sales volume on a quarterly basis, but hasn’t been able to keep enough momentum to consistently outpace it.
• In the most recent quarter, this happened again, with BYD selling 595,413 EVs compared with Tesla’s 495,570. 

Muñoz said a big drag on Tesla’s growth is its aging lineup, but therein lies a glimmer of hope for 2025 as Tesla is expected to release an updated version of its popular Model Y. “This year with the updated Model Y, the company should grow again,” Muñoz said.

This is the (Nor)way: In many countries, the demand problem plaguing EV-makers now is that the early-adopter market is saturated and the cars themselves are not yet cheap enough to be considered mass-market models. One country that seems to have surmounted the problem is Norway, where 89% of new vehicles sold last year were fully electric, Reuters reported. On Norway’s roads, EVs now account for 28% of all cars driven. One Norwegian EV driver told Reuters that sometimes she misses being able to fill her car with gasoline in a tight five minutes. Nostalgia about pumping your own gas feels very 2025.