Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / BYD Outsold Tesla by 600,000 Cars. Here's How

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BYD Outsold Tesla by 600,000 Cars. Here's How · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  In October of 2011, Elon Musk sat down for a Bloomberg
• 0:04
  interview and was asked about a Chinese company called BYD.
• 0:08
  He burst out laughing. He said.
• 0:10
  Have you seen their car? I do not think they have a great
• 0:14
  product. I do not think it is
• 0:16
  particularly attractive. The technology is not very
• 0:19
  strong. But he did not see BYD as a
• 0:22
  competitor. He thought they might not
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  survive. But 14 years later, BYD just
• 0:29
  dethrone Tesla and Elon Musk as the world's largest electronic
• 0:33
  vehicle maker. BYD sold 2.26 million all EVs in
• 0:39
  2025. Tesla delivered 1.64 million.
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  That's a gap of roughly 600,000 cars.
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  It's not even close. For the first time since the
• 0:49
  early days of the Nissan Leaf, someone other than Tesla leads
• 0:53
  the global EV market on a calendar year basis.
• 0:57
  The company Musk laughed at is now running laps around him.
• 1:00
  And how did it happen? Going to walk through the
• 1:02
  numbers, the product failures, the political backlash, the end
• 1:06
  of the tax credit, and what this means for the future of both
• 1:09
  companies. But first, I have one quick
• 1:11
  thing to take care of. Tesla released its Q 4/20/25
• 1:16
  delivery report on Friday. The company delivered 418,227
• 1:21
  vehicles in the fourth quarter, down one 5.6%.
• 1:27
  For the same period last year and for the full year, Tesla
• 1:31
  delivered 1.64 million vehicles, down 8.6% from 2024.
• 1:36
  This is the second consecutive year of declining deliveries.
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  In 2023, Tesla peaked at 1.81 million vehicles delivered.
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  In 2024, delivery slipped about 1% to 1.79 million.
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  Now the decline is accelerating. An 8.6% drop in a year when the
• 1:53
  global EV market grew approximately 25% is a company
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  losing ground. Tesla needed to deliver 571,000
• 2:02
  vehicles in quarter four to avoid a full year decline.
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  It it came up more than 150,000 short, and the fourth quarter
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  was always going to be difficult.
• 2:12
  The $7500 USD federal EV tax credit expired at the end of
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  September, and Tesla saw a record Q3 as buyers rushed to
• 2:21
  lock in the incentive before it disappeared.
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  And Tesla delivered nearly 497,000 vehicles in Q3.
• 2:28
  That pulled forward demand that would otherwise have landed in
• 2:31
  Q4. When the credit vanished, so did
• 2:34
  the urgency. But the tax credit is not the
• 2:37
  whole story. Tesla has been struggling all
• 2:40
  year. In Q1, deliveries fell 13% year
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  over year. In Q2, they fell again, and the
• 2:47
  pattern held even as the global EV market continued to grow.
• 2:51
  Tesla was shrinking inside an expanding market, and the
• 2:55
  company introduced standard versions of the Model 3 and the
• 2:58
  Model Y in October. Priced about $5000 below
• 3:02
  previous base models, it offered 0% financing on the Model Y0,
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  down leases on inventory, vehicles and some of the most
• 3:10
  aggressive incentives in company history.
• 3:12
  None of it reversed the trend. If demand was there, Tesla would
• 3:16
  not be offering 0% financing on a vehicle that just launched.
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  Inventory piled up, there's a supply climbed to 149 days by
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  November and 42% increase year over year.
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  Vehicles built to meet pre credit expiration demand now sit
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  unsold on lots across the country, including the cyber
• 3:36
  truck. Now I've been digging through
• 3:39
  analytics of the show and noticed that 37% of you are
• 3:42
  following the channel. For you, I'm forever grateful.
• 3:45
  And the other 63% haven't hit the follower subscribe button.
• 3:49
  I've been an independent journalist covering Elon Musk,
• 3:52
  SpaceX, Space Flight and tech for the last six years.
• 3:55
  And I'll continue to do that for the next 10 years.
• 3:58
  And all I ask from you is one second of your time, and all you
• 4:01
  have to do is hit the follow or subscribe button on whatever
• 4:04
  platform you're listening or watching on right now.
• 4:06
  I'm extremely grateful that you're here and I'm really happy
• 4:09
  that you're in this community. So thank you.
• 4:13
  Now Europe has been brutal for Tesla.
• 4:17
  Data from the European Automobile Manufacturers
• 4:19
  Association shows that Tesla registrations fell 39% in the
• 4:24
  1st 11 months of 2025. In the same period, BYD
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  registrations rose 240%. In May 2025, BYD registered more
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  battery electric vehicles in Europe than Tesla for the first
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  time with 7231 compared to Tesla's 7165.
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  That is happening despite EU tariffs on Chinese EVs.
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  The European Commission concluded that Chinese EV
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  manufacturers benefit from state subsidies and impose an
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  additional 17% tariff on BYD on top of the standard 10% import
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  duty. BYD is winning even with a 27%
• 5:02
  price disadvantage. It is building factories in
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  Turkey, Hungary and potentially Spain to get around the tariffs.
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  Meanwhile, Tesla's European sales are collapsing, China's no
• 5:12
  better. Tesla's market share has
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  declined significantly, Chinese EV makers priced their products
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  lower and buyers responded. Byd's domestic competitors are
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  also growing. Yearly sales surged 90% in the
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  1st 11 months 2025. Xiaomi entered the EV market
• 5:28
  2024 and is already a very serious player.
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  And Byd's own domestic market share fell from 35% in 2023 to
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  29% in 2025, as competition specified.
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  But BYD are offset those losses with international expansion.
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  It's overseas sales suppressed surpassed 1,000,000 units for
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  the first time, up 150% from 2024.
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  The company is doing what Tesla used to do.
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  It is flooding every segment with affordable, technologically
• 5:59
  competitive vehicles. And Tesla's lineup has barely
• 6:02
  changed in years. The Model 3 launched in 2017.
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  The Model Y launched in 2020. The Cyber Truck has been
• 6:09
  recalled 8 times since deliveries began.
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  It is selling at less than 10% of production capacity.
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  Tesla has no affordable entry level vehicles.
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  The $25,000 car Musk promised on Battery Day 2020 was completely
• 6:22
  scrapped and cancelled. Instead of new products, Tesla
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  pivoted to strip down versions of existing models.
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  That's not the same thing. BYD offers vehicles ranging from
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  the tiny Seagull Citicar to luxury sedans.
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  It launched new brands like Yang Wang and Denza to cover premium
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  segments. It developed a 5 minute fast
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  charging platform and is deploying it across Europe.
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  Tesla hasn't done any of this. BYD makes its own batteries, its
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  own chips, and controls its entire supply chain vertically.
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  When Musk left them in 2011, they were making phone
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  batteries. Now they're making everything
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  Tesla is not. There was also the Musk problem.
• 7:01
  After spending heavily to support Donald Trump's return to
• 7:04
  the White House, Musk led the Department of Government
• 7:06
  Efficiency for the first five months of 2025.
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  He endorsed Germany's far right Afd party.
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  He supported Britain anti immigration activist Tommy
• 7:16
  Robinson. He called for abolishing the
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  European Union. And in response, protesters
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  showed up at Tesla showrooms in Europe and the United States.
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  Some vandalized Tesla vehicles caught the showrooms on fires.
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  Some vandalized charging stations.
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  The company became a political symbol.
• 7:33
  You're not in a good way. Long time Tesla fans turned
• 7:36
  against the brand. The backlash is difficult to
• 7:38
  quantify, but analysts at multiple firms have cited it as
• 7:42
  a contributing factor in the sales decline.
• 7:44
  Musk stepped back from DOGE in May, saying he needed to refocus
• 7:48
  on Tesla and SpaceX, but the damage was already done.
• 7:52
  Tesla stock tells a different story than Tesla sales.
• 7:55
  Though shares finished 2025 up 11%, they hit an all time high
• 8:00
  of $489.88 in mid-december. Investors not betting on the car
• 8:06
  business. They're betting on autonomy,
• 8:08
  robo taxis and humanoid robots. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called
• 8:12
  the Q4 results better than feared.
• 8:15
  It said the AI, an autonomous opportunity, is worth at least a
• 8:17
  trillion dollars for Tesla. Deutsche Bank's Edison U said
• 8:20
  the narrative around robotaxi remains strong even though the
• 8:23
  fleet is smaller than expected. Musk bought a billion dollars
• 8:27
  worth of Tesla shares in September.
• 8:29
  Shareholders approved the new trillion dollar pay plan in
• 8:32
  November for Elon, and the stock trades are roughly 200 times
• 8:36
  forward earnings despite 2 consecutive years of declining
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  deliveries. Market is pricing a future that
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  does not exist yet. Now BYD is not focused on that
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  future. It's focused on making and
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  selling cars right now. And Wang Chung Fu, the founder
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  who started the company with 20 employees and $350,000 in 1995,
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  has built a company that ships more electric vehicles than
• 9:00
  anyone on the planet. BYD began by making batteries
• 9:03
  for mobile phones. It supplied Motorola and Nokia
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  during the feature phone era, and then it acquired a small
• 9:09
  automaker in 2003 and launched its first car, a combustion
• 9:14
  model, 2 years later. Its first EV arrived in 2008.
• 9:18
  In the same year, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway
• 9:21
  invested $232 million in BYD hit Charlie Munger's insistence.
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  Now, Munger described Wang, is a combination of Thomas Edison,
• 9:31
  Henry Ford and Bill Gates. Now that stake is now worth
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  billions of dollars now. In 2020, BYD launched the Blade
• 9:39
  battery, a lithium ion phosphate design that offered improved
• 9:43
  energy density and safety compared to earlier LFP cells.
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  Other manufacturers were moving away from LFP at the time.
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  BYD doubled down. The Blade went into the Hon
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  sedan, a vehicle designed to compete directly with the Model
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  S, And it worked. BYDSEV sales took off, and the
• 10:02
  company now controls its entire supply chain from raw materials
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  to finish vehicles and makes its own batteries.
• 10:09
  It owns semiconductors and its own software, and when supply
• 10:12
  chains collapsed during the pandemic, BYD kept building
• 10:16
  those cars. Vertical integration is the
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  foundation of its cost advantage now.
• 10:21
  Elon Musk later admitted that a lot has changed since 2011.
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  Their cars are highly competitive these days, he said
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  in 2023. Now they are more than
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  competitive. They're beating him.
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  They're winning. the V crown has changed hands, finally, And the
• 10:37
  question is whether Tesla can get it back, or whether Musk's
• 10:39
  bet on robo taxis and robots will pay off before the car
• 10:43
  business shrinks further. But for now, the company that
• 10:46
  Musk dismissed as a joke is the one playing the joke on him,
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  beating him at his own game. And they're making history.
• 10:54
  Tesla may still be worth more on paper, but BYD is selling way
• 10:59
  more cars than Elon. Hey thank you so much for
• 11:02
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 11:04
  support. If you could take a second and
• 11:06
  hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
• 11:09
  passing on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
• 11:12
  It helps out the show tremendously.
• 11:14
  And you'll nip and each episode is about 10 minutes to get you
• 11:17
  caught up quickly. And please, if you support the
• 11:20
  show, evenmore.com/stage Zero and please take care of
• 11:25
  yourselves and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.