Chinese car maker BYD (short for Build Your Dreams) delivered 641,000 Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the first half of this year (half of which were plug-in hybrids) to surpass Tesla before any other car producer. Add to this that BYD is the low-cost leader in car batteries with currently the third largest global capacity and plans to more than double its production by 2030. More important, BYD’s lowest priced model is less than half Tesla’s and also significantly below any other car maker.
With others in their wake, it marks the move of the EV market to its next stage of development with rapidly accelerating low-priced models to target and develop the mass market. As of now, the EV leaders that focus on the lower-priced market segments and are already investing billions in developing their capacity for this purpose have the best cars to come out as the winners. Curious to see if current runner-ups, be it established car brands or ambitious startups like Lucid and Rivian, will be able to join the leading group. For now, with production figures in the hundreds, they only play a marginal role and Elon Musk for sure (and obviously) has its doubts about their future: ’unless something changes significantly with Rivian and Lucid, they will both go bankrupt. They are tracking toward bankruptcy’. There are plenty of other Chinese and Korean candidates who are far ahead of them.
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