35
votes
BYD overtakes Tesla as China reshapes the global electric vehicle race
Link information
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- Title
- BYD sales pull ahead as Tesla stumbles on sales and politics
- Published
- Jan 2 2026
- Word count
- 699 words
Here is a link to The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales, the paper referenced in the article. Fascinating how one can be rewarded so generously for demonstrably hampering sales so dramatically. The paper doesn't mention BYD and we can imagine a world where BYD enters the US market and cuts into Tesla sales by the same amount in the absence of partisan activities, but I doubt that the current administration was eager to encourage a Chinese entrant to the US auto market.
I feel BYD's path into the USA is really just with a proxy shell company so they can conceal their ownership from the buying public. It could buy all the parts from BYD, assemble in the USA, and then slap an 'Assembled in the USA' label on it. Maybe they can buy the Saturn brand from GM.
The captive import era of Japanese cars worked kind of like that, so there's precedent for it working. Some were just rebadges, others were hodgepodges of parts made by different companies.