Forget Apple! Tesla Should Be Worried About BYD

"Bozi Tatarevic" (hoonable)
02/25/2015 at 12:57 • Filed to: chinese-cars, hoonable, tesla, byd

There has been a lot of buzz and talk about Apple making an electric car and getting to market in the next 5 years. While everyone is focused on the big brand names, the Chinese alphabet companies are slowly rising in the electric vehicle market. Everyone knows Elon Musk and immediately ties him to the Tesla, but what most people don't realize is that BYD and other Chinese car makers are also backed by big names like Warren Buffet.

When Elon Musk heard mention of BYD from a Bloomberg reporter in 2014, he laughed and said "I don't think they have a great product." He may have been laughing at the time but Warren Buffet backed BYD is growing. In the latest reports from China, BYD has sold a little over 1900 of their Qin plug-in hybrid and over 400 of their E6 all-electric vehicle just for the month of January. In comparison, according to cleantechnica.com, Tesla sold only 1500 of their Model S in January. Tesla is also trying to get in on the Chinese market but has had poor sales in that area, selling only 120 cars in January inside China. There are reports that Musk is threatening to fire his China based executives due to the poor sales figures and not reaching the goal of matching US sales by this year.

Tesla and BYD have not come to a head yet but BYD is expanding globally and has previously hinted at creating a luxury sedan. The word around BYD is that they are waiting for Tesla to warm up the Chinese luxury electric market before they put their own model out. BYD has sold a great deal of its E6 electric sedan for taxi duty and shown up in cities from Hong Kong to London. BYD is also expanding into other areas, especially public transportation and in April of last year they delivered their first electric bus in the US to the city of Lancaster, California.

BYD looks at themselves as the academics of the electric car movement while Tesla is the rockstar and due to their origins as a battery company are doing lots of research and bring cars for the middle class to the market without sacrificing quality. Tesla new battery factory in Nevada was huge news but BYD was already ahead when they started construction of their new 6.5 gigawatt-hours facility in 2014. Chinese car companies are still looked at in a low light but they are improving greatly and in a few years may be the new Kia's and Hyundai's in the US.

Bozi is the founder of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and creates articles on everything from engine swaps to late model car restorations. You can follow him on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! or drop him a line at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

DISCUSSION (16)

deekster_caddy > Bozi Tatarevic
02/25/2015 at 13:02

Tesla doesn't have anything to worry about. The EV market isn't going to grow significantly until there is a charging infrastructure to support it. Until that day, EREVs are the only way to go. I could get by for 99% of my driving with a 300 mile range vehicle but even then I'd choose the EREV unless the batteries get a lot cheaper/better.

Mercedes Streeter > Bozi Tatarevic
02/25/2015 at 13:58

Kinja'd!!!

This is a previous gen Toyota Corolla with a messed up face...

ranwhenparked > Bozi Tatarevic
02/25/2015 at 14:36

I remember reading an article in Forbes about 6 years ago talking about the coming Chinese onslaught of Western auto markets and identifying BYD as the company most likely to pioneer the charge. At the time, they talked about how their cars were reasonably modern, reasonably well built, and packed some fairly advanced technology. The fact that they had a name that was easily pronounceable and not weird sounding to Western ears was also mentioned, and Berkshire-Hathaway's investment in them was seen as proof that this prediction was correct.

I still kind of agree with most of their assessment, but I'm also still waiting.

jaywayne > Bozi Tatarevic
02/25/2015 at 17:13

Read something earlier about BYD and how people were buying their hybrids as opposed Tesla's as the Chinese customer is value oriented. Hence they'll buy the cheapest car, BYD, these are non-electric or hybrids. Their electric cars cost(50-60k) as much as tesla's and are more akin to a Nissan Leaf (less quality of course).

Peter > deekster_caddy
02/25/2015 at 17:24

That's a false assumption. With a range of 250+ miles most people can SAVE TIME using home charging rather than driving after gas. You wake up every day with 250+ miles ready to go with a Tesla Model S while driving any gas car is a sure ticking clock to a next waste of time trip to a gas station. Personally I spend around 30 minutes per week just getting gas or almost an entire day wasted per year. Add to that the wasted time of oil changes. In a Model S for any normal driving need, you might waste 10 seconds per day in plugging in the car.
This is one reason why Model S has scored the highest actual customer satisfaction in a recent survey among all cars available in the USA.
Battery cost is a more real concern for mass adaptation.

Peter > Bozi Tatarevic
02/25/2015 at 17:26

Finally someone who see the real threat of Tesla Motors and the American auto business in general. BYD is one potential candidate to take over the USA market when EV cars effectively become competitive. Our old car companies like GM are core competency wise stuck in a soup of oil with poor passion for doing a truly optimized EV.

DagJohansen > deekster_caddy
02/25/2015 at 18:51

Tesla does not need any charging infrastructure other than chargers at owner's homes and the Supercharger network.

greenagain > Bozi Tatarevic
02/25/2015 at 20:13

"The word around BYD is that they are waiting for Tesla to warm up the Chinese luxury electric market before they put their own model out"

what about all of the cars they've already had on offer for years that nobody is buying. Though I notice from your picture they stepped up their Corolla clone body by a generation.

They also just took another run at it this year at the LA auto show, and nobody noticed again.

fredjohnson > Bozi Tatarevic
02/25/2015 at 20:53

Tesla will be bankrupt within 5 years. They are basically a Ponzi scheme fleecing the fools who bought the stock.

Phoc Que > Bozi Tatarevic
02/26/2015 at 01:17

shiette hell no! I would rather walk 5-million miles on foot than to buy a buy and drive a Chinese junk car!

deekster_caddy > Peter
02/26/2015 at 14:17

It's not an assumption. I drive a Volt. It takes 10-15 seconds to plug in to charge. I have to visit a gas station for fuel in the tank every 6 weeks or so instead of once a week, I get about 1100-1200 miles per tank. I've been analyzing my driving habits for EV range for the last 30,000 miles. I have days where I drive 35 miles, I have days where I drive 250 miles. The 250 mile days would be a stretch in a 300 mile range car, because that 300 mile range is under ideal conditions. Here I often have to use the heater, etc. and there are no places I could plug in during the day. That means an EREV is the right solution for me.

If the 300 mile EV were a second car I could get away with it on those longer days by driving something else. But with my primary vehicle an EREV, I just keep going without having to worry about where the next plug is.

deekster_caddy > DagJohansen
02/26/2015 at 14:18

They need a lot more superchargers then, and not just on highways. I drive a Volt. I pay attention to how many miles a day I drive. At least every other week I have a 250 mile day.

Peter > deekster_caddy
02/26/2015 at 16:47

@deekster_caddy, obviously the math is not the same for everyone. However, a lot of people rarely drive more than 250 miles in one day. I know plenty of people who can't even tell me one trip of this distance here in California in their own car. And a few vacation trips during a year with an outside charging that involves waiting for a time equivalent to get a meal, wont change the point. But surely some people, like yourself, will need more than 250 miles per full charge to make on-the-go charging become a non-issue. As I mentioned Tesla Model S is the very car with the highest customer satisfaction of any car currently available in the USA, so obviously a lot of people can be happy with this range for the driving they do in it.

deekster_caddy > Peter
02/27/2015 at 12:19

Of course that is true about the high customer satisfaction rating. The Volt is near the top position in customer satisfaction ratings too. The Tesla costs double plus more than the Volt too.

Here's another thing I did last summer in my Volt that you can't do in any EV at this time. I had a family emergency in Florida while I was on vacation in Maine. My brother and I looked into flights and it was going to be the following afternoon at $800 per person. So I picked him up that evening and 26 hours later we were 1500 miles south, having stopped only for gas stations, for about $150 in fuel. We didn't have to worry about renting a car when we got there, or finding a plug (there weren't many). If Elon's fast battery change stations become a reality we could have done that in a Tesla with some extra effort, if we followed all the speed limits and stretched our range. Instead I was able to run with the cruise control set a bit higher than the posted limits and get there quicker.

I've never felt a bit of 'range anxiety'. I just go wherever, whenever I need to go. Sure, we could have taken somebody else's car or rented a car but if I'm going to have one car to rule them all, it's going to be an EREV... at least, with what's available today. Maybe in a decade things will be drastically different. By then I'll be ready for something different to drive and to see where the EV market and charging infrastructure are.

Peter > deekster_caddy
03/20/2015 at 05:38

I'm not saying your example is irrelevant, but many of us don't have even a single case like that. I consistently fly when I go far places as I don't really have time to sit in a car for many hours anyway. Time is valuable to me and when it takes longer to drive than to fly, I will fly.

deekster_caddy > Peter
03/20/2015 at 16:32

I really don't like flying. The flying part itself is cool, but the industry surrounding it is horrible. The airports are awful, customer service is awful, pricing is awful... I get where you are coming from. For the regular distance traveller flying makes a lot of sense. Time is valuable to me too. Don't forget the time it takes to get to and from the airports, plus you have to arrive 90 minutes before the flight, have transportation on the other end, etc.

Here's another typical example for me: For our family to fly from a suburb of Boston to a suburb of Pittsburgh (where we have relatives) it will take about 6 hours door to door if we get a nonstop flight and there are no delays, and cost about $1200. We can drive there in 11 hours (including stops for gas, food etc) for about $100, plus we have a car to use when we get there. That makes it worth driving. Technically flying there is faster, but for me the extra 5 hours our family spends together is not wasted time.

Boston to NYC? 45 minute flight time, sure. But don't forget the 2 hours spent getting to the airport 90 minutes before your flight, then getting from LaGuardia downtown. I'll drive my car near the city and take the train the rest of the way, thanks. 4 hours door to door instead of 3, but I'm in control.

I love driving, including driving long distances. If I can find an excuse to drive there, I'll be driving there. At any rate, the point was more about the flexibility of an EREV vs a BEV. Also, in CA you have a much better public charging infrastructure. Around here we've got squat.