BYD dethrones Tesla to become the world's largest electric car maker

While BYD launched its first electric car a year after Tesla released the inaugural Roadster in 2008, it has now become the world's largest EV maker. For the first time ever, BYD produced more electric cars than Tesla in a single quarter.

Tesla just announced its Q4 sales and deliveries of 494,989 and 484,507 total units, respectively, including the Cybertruck numbers for the first time. While the 1.83 million vehicles it moved in 2023 were slightly above Wall Street analysts' expectations, they still fell short of Elon Musk's 2 million aspiration. That's despite the fact that Tesla employed all the sales tricks in the book to pad the Q4 numbers, from free Supercharger months, through facelift Model 3 Highland production ramp, to subsidy loss warnings.

BYD, on the other hand, just became the world's biggest EV manufacturer by selling 526,409 electric cars in Q4 and beating Tesla's numbers by more than 8% for the first time. The big BYD ramp coincides with the launch of its cheapest electric car - the $15,000 Seagull - while Tesla is yet to announce its mass market Model 2.

BYD almost caught up with Tesla in Q3 deliveries and now managed to handily beat it, riding high on the sales of its bestselling Song, Dolphin, and Atto lines. More than 95% of Tesla sales were made of the Model Y and Model 3, but for the first time its "Other models" sales category includes the admittedly miniscule amount of Cybertruck deliveries to their first customers.

While BYD sells most of its electric cars to Chinese customers, it has presence in many other regions, and just announced that it will continue its global expansion with its first big EV factory in Europe, ready to take on the eventual Tesla Model 2 scheduled for Giga Berlin production.

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