https://fortune.com/2022/07/06/warren-buffett-byd-tesla-ev-sales-elon-musk-doubt-technology/
BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle firm partly owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, became the world’s largest electric vehicle maker in the first half of 2022, wrestling the title from Elon Musk's EV giant Tesla in another sign of the Chinese automaker's resilience in the face of COVID-inflicted disruptions that plagued its rivals this year. BYD sold 641,350 new electric vehicles in the first half of this year, compared to Tesla's 564,743, company filings show. Sales at BYD are also growing at a faster pace than at its American counterpart. In the first six months of 2022, BYD sold 486,771 more cars than it did in the first half of 2021, representing an increase of 315%. Tesla, meanwhile, sold 178,693 more vehicles in the first half of this year compared to last, a 46% year-on-year bump. However, the companies' sales don't represent an apples-to-apples comparison. Many of BYD's car sales are plug-in hybrids and use gasoline engines to supplement battery power. Tesla, on the other hand, exclusively sells fully electric cars. China counts both types of vehicles as “zero-emission.”
BYD's stock price in Hong Kong has barely budged since the firm released the sales figures earlier this week. But investors have been high on BYD since the start of this year despite the bear market in the U.S. and a challenging environment in China. BYD's stock price has risen nearly 25% since the start of this year. In that same timeframe, Tesla's stock price in New York has dropped 42%. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway was an early backer of BYD, pouring $232 million into the company in 2008. Now worth $7.7 billion, the investment is one of Berkshire's most lucrative bets.
Musk, meanwhile, was an early doubter of BYD. “Have you seen their car?” the Tesla CEO told Bloomberg News in 2011. “I don’t think they have a great product.” Tesla has attributed its sluggish growth early this year to COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai that disrupted production at its gigafactory near the city. “We [lost] a lot of important days of production. And there are sort of upstream supplier challenges where a lot of suppliers also lost many days of production,” Musk said in a quarterly earnings call in May.
Leave a Reply