BYD Electric Cars Surpass Tesla in Global Sales, Beating Elon Musk’s Predictions

Jakarta –

The electric car manufacturer from China, BYD, beat Tesla in sales of electric cars worldwide. This news seemed to slap the CEO of Tesla, Inc., Elon Musk, in the face, who once laughed at BYD.

Yes, in an interview with Bloomberg TV in 2011, Elon once laughed at BYD. At that time, BYD had just received fresh funds from Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, which bought 225 million BYD shares for US$ 232 million.

When asked whether BYD would be a strong competitor to Tesla, Elon laughed out loud and in a mocking tone, Elon wondered, would BYD electric cars be seen on the road? Elon also said that BYD would not be a strong competitor to Tesla, because their products did not have good technology.

Tesla electric car Photo: Getty Images

“Did you see their car?” said Elon Musk while laughing. “I don’t think they have a good (EV) product. I think the product is not very interesting, the technology is not very strong,” continued Elon.

But after more than 10 years, it seems now it’s BYD’s turn to laugh at Tesla. The problem is that BYD’s sales are now far superior to Tesla’s sales. BYD reports that it has sold three million units of electric cars worldwide throughout 2023. This figure is far behind Tesla, which in its year-end report said it had succeeded in selling 1.8 million electric cars. This is the second time in a row that Tesla has lost to BYD when it comes to worldwide sales figures. As quoted by CNBC.

For information, the Tesla sales figures above only include full BEV (Battery Electric Vehicles) cars. This company from the United States only produces and sells fully electric cars.

BYD electric car Photo: (Rangga Rahadiansyah/detikOto)

Meanwhile BYD’s sales figures also include BEV cars and hybrid cars. It is stated that BYD has sold 1.6 million full BEV cars, while 1.4 million are hybrid cars.

Despite reaching three million electric car units, BYD failed to meet its target of selling 3.05 million vehicles as targeted. The number of cars they sold was ‘only’ 3.02 million.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has also revised his laugh at BYD. In May 2023, Elon Musk, via his personal X account, uploaded a comment about his video laughing at BYD. In that comment, in essence, Elon began to realize that BYD’s electric car products would become competitive products on the market.

“That happened many years ago. Their cars are very competitive these days,” wrote Elon Musk.

What do you think of BYD?

Elon Musk starts laughing… have you seen their cars ?
pic.twitter.com/aSvcqmOAo8

— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) May 27, 2023

Watch the video “Tesla shares plummet, Elon Musk loses IDR 380 trillion overnight”

(citation/rgr)

2024-01-03 08:35:46
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