Selling that many cars despite intense competition at home and trade barriers abroad seems the more natural way to express that story.
They instead focused on how in evil communist China you need to continue to make better cars than rivals in order for your business to succeed and grow.
What a strange system they have over there. If only they were capitalist like the US and being an incumbent connected to the regime was all you needed to keep extracting money from the population despite product stagnation.
You write and I quote: "Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars"
Your own link to proof your quote says: "Hundreds of cars alleged to be illegally stored at a NSW fun park"
I think EU/NA residents are a little naive on how much Chinese cars are dominating the market. Chinese cars don't sell just in China. They utterly dominate globally outside of EU/NA where they face extreme tariffs. To the point where certain cars that you'd say were American (eg. Tesla) actually make most of their cars in China.
Right now around the world in non EU/NA countries Tesla's a bit on the nose. All Tesla's in Australia are Chinese made regardless but it's then a choice of Chinese made Tesla vs Chinese made BYD and the BYDs are by all reports excellent cars.
PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same car, even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made cars in and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened you.
Correct, in every thread about BYD or other car manufacturers people seem to forget about the other 7.5 billion people in the world outside of the US and Europe. Sure the US' broken dealership laws and red-scare tantrums will stop these cars selling there, and in their economic satraps, but for the global majority countries there's no such barrier.
We are seeing the culmination of the 50+ China industrialization project at the samme time as the West's 50+ year financialization and deindustrialization project, all to concentrate even more wealth in the hands of the 0.01%.
China is really the only country capable and willing to build infrastructure. The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring. The chip ban in particular has created a captive market for Chinese chips. In 1945, American exceptionalists believed the USSR would take 20+ yars to copy the atomic bomb, if they could do it at all. It took 4 years. China will do the same thing with EUV in the coming years.
Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs and import bans on BYD in the US and much of Europe.
Additionally, Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.
As an example of how China uses state power, a famine in the 20th century caused China to decide that food security was a national security interest. The availability of cheap, quality food is viewed as essential and the state intervenes to ensure that continues. Likewise for housing.
Western companies seem increasingly focused on the top 10% because the bottom 90% have nothing left to eextract.
It's like the 1970s all over again with how the US Big 3 makers are facing an existential threat held at bay only by protectionism. They're going to have to learn to compete yet again.
> US/EU automakers are still struggling to offer anything barely competitive.
Imagine yourself being one of the top management guys in one of those legacy car makers, you've spent your entire life building what you "earned" in that company...Suddenly the company tells you that you will be sidelined so more resources that once thought to be under your control can be allocated to an EV project so you can be further marginalize in the near future. what will be your reactions? You offer to help in the project (by building junks with your legacy understanding on cars) or you do anything possible to sink that project.
The result is the same - your legacy carmaker company is fxxked.
It is not like just US/EU legacy automakers struggling to offer anything competitive - Chinese legacy automakers that have been in the exact same market for decades with direct access to the exact same supply chain and government subsidies are suffering from the exact same problem. It is not about regulations, market access or subsidies. It is just human nature.
US dealers and manufacturers have no financial incentive in promoting and selling EVs. They can’t survive on fixing window chips, rotating tires and occasional bodywork alone. It’s a huge industry with long tentacles.
And when they do or did have incentives, they were not passed on to the consumers. My 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 had a $57K sticker. That’s not what I paid for it and cheapish leases are aplenty- but - when the federal $7500 credit expired, they simply dropped the MSRP by that much if not more. BMW and others are pursuing the same strategy in the states. The car was never worth near that much to begin with. They were and are jacking up prices and pocketing the change.
I bought BYD stock in 2025 before split in the hope that their market dominance will translate to great returns. The stock has pretty consistently traded down since then. Meanwhile Tesla stock soared purely on the air coming out of Elon’s mouth.
it make sense with geo politics, governments started slowly using same playbook, banning chinese cars anywere possible because of real risks of espionage etc.
“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
Also, their market position has already been factored in by market participants with multiple orders of magnitude greater capital and access to information about the company than you do. Thats not to say the market valuation is accurate, but it does mean that you guessing which way the market has mis-valued the stock is a coin flip.
BYD does not make most of its revenue on BEVs. It is mostly batteries and more plugin hybrids than BEVs and they lose money selling BEVs (less than almost all other electric car makers though). Tesla make only BEVs and make a profit doing so (the only? large maker to consistently do so).
My guess is that Tesla is doing better because FSD has improved significantly over the past few months. Even with that, most of the recent increase has been them regaining the valuation they lost earlier this year.
I am a China perma bull and a panda hugger but most of my money is in the US.
US capital is the completely dominant center of global capital and it will be so for decades to come. Ultimately this will flip too as China becomes the global economic center but I am not quite sure what it will look like and I don't assume the process of capital allocation will be exactly the same as it is today in the US-system (there may be more state directed investment, more bank lending, perhaps less public speculation, or even novel financial structures).
That said - Chinese stocks had a good year in 2025 and are currently on a run - and there is certainly a lot of value there.
I could give you many reasons. I see where you went wrong, here are some to think about:
- next time don't just look at stock value and volume. Look at cashflow
- Consider that most investment volume comes from institutional investors in Wall Street, not in China. Even Chinese investment is routed through NY, Singapore, UK, etc, with the slight exception of Hong Kong.
- Consider geopolitics before investing too. Trump really went all-in in tariffs that basically geofence EV business to american brands.
- The hope for BYD is in EU and UK markets. EU has also been extremely harsh to welcoming BYD and protectionist of their (German) auto makers. This hasn't avoided BYD entering the market, but also has stopped them from shipping en masse. Might change.
- BYD is not a competitor to Tesla. BYD market is the low end market mostly. For example, what today in EU is Dacia (1st or 2nd best seller by number of units). Tesla on the other hand is purposely set up as a mid-high seller. It is too expensive for the cheap segment of the market (10-20k) and is well below luxury vehicles. Different market segment, also better margins in that segment.
- Auto industry is cyclical not defensive. In times of economic uncertainty like today, if you want a solid investment you should look at defensive not cyclical.
- Generally it is a bad idea for retailers to invest in Chinese HQed companies due to the complex geopolitics that surrounding the stock. For example, you have severe limitations in stock market products and they have tight regulation, unlike the US where you have a free-market.
- Consider the market of derivatives. Very different market of futures in China vs the US.
- Tesla is also a self-driving company and robotics company. It would be better compared to XPENG than to BYD.
- Tesla owns the EV market in North America. Period. This is the reality today.
- On top of all that yes the stock is hyped up. But you should know that and invest with that in mind. Being full blown rational in an irrational market will not work.
Can you even own Chinese stock as a foreigner? I thought Chinese 'stock' was essentially 'IOU's held by a foreign third party who holds it on your behalf. I would not trust a significant amount of money to such a scheme.
> Part of the reason that China’s stock market trends sideways is that everyone’s profits are competed away. Big Tech might enjoy the monopolistic success smiled upon by Peter Thiel, coming almost to genteel agreements not to tread too hard upon each other’s business lines. Chinese firms have to fight it out in a rough-and-tumble environment, expanding all the time into each other’s core businesses, taking Jeff “your margin is my opportunity” Bezos with seriousness.
> I bought BYD stock in 2025 before split in the hope that their market dominance will translate to great returns. The stock has pretty consistently traded down since then. Meanwhile Tesla stock soared purely on the air coming out of Elon’s mouth.
Interesting take there. Tesla Model Y is the #1 best-selling car globally in 2025 for the third year.
Meanwhile, your BYD is bleeding from real price wars and demand slumps. Tesla's valuation? Still baked in autonomy, energy, and AI upside not just car volume. Calling it "air" while hyping your own wishful dominance is nothing but peak projection.
Actually, credible ESG ratings like thee ones from Sustainalytics or MSCI show BYD scoring above average for human rights governance in the automotive sector, not at the bottom
More importantly, this highlights a pattern of selective scrutiny:
- When Western companies (like Tesla) source batteries from the same regions (or use batteries from BYD or CATL), human rights concerns rarely drive mainstream criticism or policy actions
- When industries dominated by Western monopolies (eg: Big Tech's app stores or cloud services) face human rights allegations (like labor abuses in global supply chains or censorship complicity)= the backlash is often muted or just silenced
- But when a non Western competitor like BYD gains traction, human rights rhetoric suddenly intensifies, even without evidence matching the severity of claims against established Western companies
It's geopolitically convenient criticism, FUD against what threatens a western monopolistic ecosystem
They have their own internal market, which now has a middle class equal in size to the entire US population.
They have all of Asia, with a market of another ~2B, and a completely undeveloped market in Africa of another 1B people.
That's part of what the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is, an industrial policy to establish trade links and infrastructure dependencies across the world that uses Chinese direct FDI and industrial policy to establish new markets for their own industries.
Which is exactly the same policy that the US adopted as part of the Marshall Plan and its use (up until 2025) of soft power to promote US FDI across the world.
It's the US that is dependent on a defense industry and foreign sales for its industrial capacity.
That's why the US defense budget is 50% of the total and over USD1T/year and is why the US is demanding that NATO nations buy US defense equipment.
The number of BYD on fire videos, and examples where the tires simply fall off because they don't use enough metal in the suspension. Makes me scared to be anywhere near one of their vehicles. please keep them out of the USA for safety sake. That's 4.6M state sponsored vehicles that should not be on the road. Don't forget the chinese gov'ts ability to lock you out from driving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWzbq-Q_oTc
I'm not choosing sides here but if telecom equipment from e.g. HuaWei is not allowed on US/EU markets because of national security concerns, then should we allow cars?
We don’t see BYD cars in the US or Canada very much yet because of tariffs. But head down to Mexico and they’re everywhere. The Chinese EV automakers are crushing it.
It’s not just tariffs. They’re not homologated to the US market, so even if you were will to pay multiples more than people in Australia do, you can’t register one in the US.
This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking. Rent seeking in the long run is brittle. You get a little security now for loss of competitiveness in the future - once the rent seeking goes away, you’re screwed. You haven’t had to compete, so you haven’t adapted. Consumers flee because they’ve just tolerated you - they actively dislike being forced into fewer choices
Rent seeking is industry suicide. It feels like it helps, but it’s not solving the real problem.
I'm trying really hard to think of a US car maker that's actually super relevant outside of the US.
Ford in Europe is Ford Germany, a fully owned but separate entity (which is probably why Ford sales in Europe are decent). I think they have presence in other markets but most of their money comes from the US.
GM used to have Opel/Vauxhall, but it sold it to Stellantis.
Chrysler is now owned by Stellantis, which is a mostly European car maker.
Tesla is the obvious new kid on the block but unless they're the only ones with self driving cars globally, I don't really see them hanging on to their global market share 20 years from now in front of Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and European car makers.
Hmm, but aren't they dumping cars in the market and still not selling? They're stuck with massive amounts of unsold stock, and the market isn't taking it - something doesn't add up.
Western auto makers are getting slaughtered by Chinese competition outside of the US (and maybe the EU? I don't know what the EU tariff situation is). I have a Chinese EV. It was half the price of an equivalent Tesla and better in every single way. Build quality and reliability have been excellent. I've driven 60,000 km with zero battery degradation.
It's just sort of amazing how badly the west dropped the ball on green tech. We're also working on importing an off grid solar system from china that will easily be a third of the price that we'd get from a US supplier.
One interesting thing that people don't realize with regards to the US tariffs is that a lot of goods flow through the US on their way to international markets. For a long time it has been easiest for us to buy stuff made in china from vendors such as Amazon in the US and have it shipped internationally from the US. Now with all of the tariffs we end up getting double tariffed for doing this (once when the goods enter the US and a second time when they ship to my country). As a result I'm seeing more and more people looking for ways to buy from China directly.
This is certainly alarming for US auto manufacturers. Tesla is the only successful EV car company which is able to somewhat compete with BYD, but for many it is hardly an option because of it's leadership.
meanwhile my BYD stock didn't go up... Hope 2026 this will change.
For China, this is ultimately a good thing. BYD employs a large number of workers and has factories in many developing countries such as Brazil and Central Asia..., creating numerous job opportunities. Many of BYD's factories in China are located around non-first-tier cities, where workers may earn only around 5,000 to 6,000 yuan. However, considering China's extremely low cost of living and deflation, this salary is sufficient to support a family and drive more consumption in the market.
What's facinating to me is the lack of software comparison in comments. Lots of comments where people compare driving noise, material quality, price to Tesla and other brands. Sure it's important to some, but its like comparing apple vs android watch by how the leather strap feels on each device.
Anyone has experience with BYD over-the-air-updates? Do they release updates often? Are there any serious bugs like with Lucid air? How does the software compare to Tesla?
I would buy a BYD if the communist US government didn't ban them for being overly competitive. I rented one of these in Mexico last year and it was nice and affordable at 35k with the performance of a model S.
I don't think many here realize how many Chinese EVs are sold globally.
In Europe Volkswagen group dominates EV sales by far, but Chinese competitors are taking lots of the other spots. Jaecoo is one that recently has been spreading everywhere.
It should worry plenty that Europeans are gonna buy Chinese cars with their huge amount of tariffs even when they end up priced similar to European or US offerings.
I was recently surprised by an Italian YouTuber doing the "stans" tour of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and these countries were ultra filled with Chinese EVs. There's no chance anything sells in any similar way.
Not gonna lie, I was very jealous at the fact they could get such great cars in the $ 10/20 k range.
I hate these nationalistic socialist tariffs.
They only make local producers less competitive (as they are protected from competition) and at the same time erode your own exports.
I visited China recently for 3 weeks. They have really nice EVs, got to ride on a bunch of different brands/models just by using DiDi (equivalent to Uber there).
They also have them on display on shopping malls, for example on Huawei and Xiaomi stores.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 76.4 ms ] threadThey instead focused on how in evil communist China you need to continue to make better cars than rivals in order for your business to succeed and grow.
What a strange system they have over there. If only they were capitalist like the US and being an incumbent connected to the regime was all you needed to keep extracting money from the population despite product stagnation.
Meanwhile they are dumping thousands of cars in public parking lots: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/byd-australia-accused-...
And BYD sits on a pile of debt they use to pay suppliers expecting ever-increasing sales (Evergrande business model). https://medium.com/@davidsehyeonbaek/a-deep-dive-into-byds-s...
Right now around the world in non EU/NA countries Tesla's a bit on the nose. All Tesla's in Australia are Chinese made regardless but it's then a choice of Chinese made Tesla vs Chinese made BYD and the BYDs are by all reports excellent cars.
PS to Canadians: You could be paying ~50% less for the same car, even same model to same model by allowing Chinese made cars in and it'd help you screw over a country that threatened you.
Vantor Legion-2 image of the BYD plant in Zhengzhou as captured on 18 January 2025: https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=113.9361%2...
Vantor WorldView-3 image of the Tesla plant in Austin as captured on 31 January 2024: https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=-97.6189%2...
China is really the only country capable and willing to build infrastructure. The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring. The chip ban in particular has created a captive market for Chinese chips. In 1945, American exceptionalists believed the USSR would take 20+ yars to copy the atomic bomb, if they could do it at all. It took 4 years. China will do the same thing with EUV in the coming years.
Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs and import bans on BYD in the US and much of Europe.
Additionally, Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.
As an example of how China uses state power, a famine in the 20th century caused China to decide that food security was a national security interest. The availability of cheap, quality food is viewed as essential and the state intervenes to ensure that continues. Likewise for housing.
Western companies seem increasingly focused on the top 10% because the bottom 90% have nothing left to eextract.
Imagine yourself being one of the top management guys in one of those legacy car makers, you've spent your entire life building what you "earned" in that company...Suddenly the company tells you that you will be sidelined so more resources that once thought to be under your control can be allocated to an EV project so you can be further marginalize in the near future. what will be your reactions? You offer to help in the project (by building junks with your legacy understanding on cars) or you do anything possible to sink that project.
The result is the same - your legacy carmaker company is fxxked.
It is not like just US/EU legacy automakers struggling to offer anything competitive - Chinese legacy automakers that have been in the exact same market for decades with direct access to the exact same supply chain and government subsidies are suffering from the exact same problem. It is not about regulations, market access or subsidies. It is just human nature.
And when they do or did have incentives, they were not passed on to the consumers. My 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 had a $57K sticker. That’s not what I paid for it and cheapish leases are aplenty- but - when the federal $7500 credit expired, they simply dropped the MSRP by that much if not more. BMW and others are pursuing the same strategy in the states. The car was never worth near that much to begin with. They were and are jacking up prices and pocketing the change.
BYD is dumping.
Also, their market position has already been factored in by market participants with multiple orders of magnitude greater capital and access to information about the company than you do. Thats not to say the market valuation is accurate, but it does mean that you guessing which way the market has mis-valued the stock is a coin flip.
US capital is the completely dominant center of global capital and it will be so for decades to come. Ultimately this will flip too as China becomes the global economic center but I am not quite sure what it will look like and I don't assume the process of capital allocation will be exactly the same as it is today in the US-system (there may be more state directed investment, more bank lending, perhaps less public speculation, or even novel financial structures).
That said - Chinese stocks had a good year in 2025 and are currently on a run - and there is certainly a lot of value there.
- next time don't just look at stock value and volume. Look at cashflow
- Consider that most investment volume comes from institutional investors in Wall Street, not in China. Even Chinese investment is routed through NY, Singapore, UK, etc, with the slight exception of Hong Kong.
- Consider geopolitics before investing too. Trump really went all-in in tariffs that basically geofence EV business to american brands.
- The hope for BYD is in EU and UK markets. EU has also been extremely harsh to welcoming BYD and protectionist of their (German) auto makers. This hasn't avoided BYD entering the market, but also has stopped them from shipping en masse. Might change.
- BYD is not a competitor to Tesla. BYD market is the low end market mostly. For example, what today in EU is Dacia (1st or 2nd best seller by number of units). Tesla on the other hand is purposely set up as a mid-high seller. It is too expensive for the cheap segment of the market (10-20k) and is well below luxury vehicles. Different market segment, also better margins in that segment.
- Auto industry is cyclical not defensive. In times of economic uncertainty like today, if you want a solid investment you should look at defensive not cyclical.
- Generally it is a bad idea for retailers to invest in Chinese HQed companies due to the complex geopolitics that surrounding the stock. For example, you have severe limitations in stock market products and they have tight regulation, unlike the US where you have a free-market.
- Consider the market of derivatives. Very different market of futures in China vs the US.
- Tesla is also a self-driving company and robotics company. It would be better compared to XPENG than to BYD.
- Tesla owns the EV market in North America. Period. This is the reality today.
- On top of all that yes the stock is hyped up. But you should know that and invest with that in mind. Being full blown rational in an irrational market will not work.
> Part of the reason that China’s stock market trends sideways is that everyone’s profits are competed away. Big Tech might enjoy the monopolistic success smiled upon by Peter Thiel, coming almost to genteel agreements not to tread too hard upon each other’s business lines. Chinese firms have to fight it out in a rough-and-tumble environment, expanding all the time into each other’s core businesses, taking Jeff “your margin is my opportunity” Bezos with seriousness.
https://danwang.co/2025-letter/
Interesting take there. Tesla Model Y is the #1 best-selling car globally in 2025 for the third year.
Meanwhile, your BYD is bleeding from real price wars and demand slumps. Tesla's valuation? Still baked in autonomy, energy, and AI upside not just car volume. Calling it "air" while hyping your own wishful dominance is nothing but peak projection.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
More importantly, this highlights a pattern of selective scrutiny:
- When Western companies (like Tesla) source batteries from the same regions (or use batteries from BYD or CATL), human rights concerns rarely drive mainstream criticism or policy actions
- When industries dominated by Western monopolies (eg: Big Tech's app stores or cloud services) face human rights allegations (like labor abuses in global supply chains or censorship complicity)= the backlash is often muted or just silenced
- But when a non Western competitor like BYD gains traction, human rights rhetoric suddenly intensifies, even without evidence matching the severity of claims against established Western companies
It's geopolitically convenient criticism, FUD against what threatens a western monopolistic ecosystem
Really the only option they have is to swap the products to military ones so that they can create the global markets they need.
It’s gonna be a bumpy decade.
Uh..
If that's the case, then someone needs to tell that to all the people buying Chinese cars man.
They have all of Asia, with a market of another ~2B, and a completely undeveloped market in Africa of another 1B people.
That's part of what the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is, an industrial policy to establish trade links and infrastructure dependencies across the world that uses Chinese direct FDI and industrial policy to establish new markets for their own industries.
Which is exactly the same policy that the US adopted as part of the Marshall Plan and its use (up until 2025) of soft power to promote US FDI across the world.
It's the US that is dependent on a defense industry and foreign sales for its industrial capacity.
That's why the US defense budget is 50% of the total and over USD1T/year and is why the US is demanding that NATO nations buy US defense equipment.
BYD vehicles are sold in Europe where they have to meet safety requirements that are arguably more stringent than in the US.
Their flagship show room has great beer and good food, too.
A couple of years ago the only notable EVs you'd see were Teslas, now you'd see at least 2-3x as many BYDs.
But getting hit by 50% tariffs in Mexico as of today:
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-tariffs-go-into-effe...
Rent seeking is industry suicide. It feels like it helps, but it’s not solving the real problem.
Ford in Europe is Ford Germany, a fully owned but separate entity (which is probably why Ford sales in Europe are decent). I think they have presence in other markets but most of their money comes from the US.
GM used to have Opel/Vauxhall, but it sold it to Stellantis.
Chrysler is now owned by Stellantis, which is a mostly European car maker.
Tesla is the obvious new kid on the block but unless they're the only ones with self driving cars globally, I don't really see them hanging on to their global market share 20 years from now in front of Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and European car makers.
TL;DR: I agree with you.
It's just sort of amazing how badly the west dropped the ball on green tech. We're also working on importing an off grid solar system from china that will easily be a third of the price that we'd get from a US supplier.
One interesting thing that people don't realize with regards to the US tariffs is that a lot of goods flow through the US on their way to international markets. For a long time it has been easiest for us to buy stuff made in china from vendors such as Amazon in the US and have it shipped internationally from the US. Now with all of the tariffs we end up getting double tariffed for doing this (once when the goods enter the US and a second time when they ship to my country). As a result I'm seeing more and more people looking for ways to buy from China directly.
For China, this is ultimately a good thing. BYD employs a large number of workers and has factories in many developing countries such as Brazil and Central Asia..., creating numerous job opportunities. Many of BYD's factories in China are located around non-first-tier cities, where workers may earn only around 5,000 to 6,000 yuan. However, considering China's extremely low cost of living and deflation, this salary is sufficient to support a family and drive more consumption in the market.
The factory in zhengzhou: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyCTwhdqOhs
zhengzhou is also famous for produce iphone before..
Anyone has experience with BYD over-the-air-updates? Do they release updates often? Are there any serious bugs like with Lucid air? How does the software compare to Tesla?
https://www.byd.com/eu/electric-cars/seal
In Europe Volkswagen group dominates EV sales by far, but Chinese competitors are taking lots of the other spots. Jaecoo is one that recently has been spreading everywhere.
It should worry plenty that Europeans are gonna buy Chinese cars with their huge amount of tariffs even when they end up priced similar to European or US offerings.
I was recently surprised by an Italian YouTuber doing the "stans" tour of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and these countries were ultra filled with Chinese EVs. There's no chance anything sells in any similar way.
Not gonna lie, I was very jealous at the fact they could get such great cars in the $ 10/20 k range.
I hate these nationalistic socialist tariffs.
They only make local producers less competitive (as they are protected from competition) and at the same time erode your own exports.
They also have them on display on shopping malls, for example on Huawei and Xiaomi stores.