BYD to end the Tesla era on electric motor and battery tech merits

Tesla will cease to be the electric vehicle market leader in both sales and technology in 2025, predicts market research firm Counterpoint.

According to its EV industry analysts, BYD will sell more electric cars than Tesla in a year for the first time. What's worse news for Tesla and Elon Musk, however, is that the study predicts BYD will dethrone it on technology merits, rather than some kind of sales fluke. This might explain why Chinese regulators are hesitant to grant BYD permits to build a factory in Mexico, as they worry US automakers like Tesla could get a hold on its technology.

Granted, Tesla is sitting on $200 million worth of unsold Cybertruck inventory, according to its latest shipping numbers, but the new Model Y could still prove a sales hit outside of China, too.

The Counterpoint market study, however, predicts that even in that case, BYD will still become the world's largest EV company in 2025 for the first time, simply because it now offers the better technology.

BYD recently unveiled its new 1 MW EV platform that, taken as a whole, provides unsurpassed powertrain and drivetrain combo. This megawatt high-voltage architecture, for instance, allowed it to develop the fastest electric motor in the industry that can run at more than 30,000 rpm, and fits in the same footprint. 

The same goes for the fast charging 10C battery that BYD created specifically to take advantage of the 1MW system that tops it up in 5 minutes. BYD is also building the charging network to match, with more than 500 station projected to be operational in less than a month.

Needless to say, this has all been made possible by BYD's vertical integration as the world's second-biggest battery maker, too. Not only does this allow it to craft custom EV powertrain technologies, but also to achieve manufacturing economies that may prove hard for Tesla to replicate, given the thermal efficiency issues of its homebrew 4680 batteries.

Where Tesla still shines is its production cost controls and autonomous driving software, but BYD recently announced that it will include its new self-driving system called Eye of God with all of its cars for free.

This could essentially allow the world's biggest EV maker to quickly amass millions of miles driven with it to parse and analyze while it tries to catch up to Tesla's $8,000 FSD option.

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