BYD officially passed Tesla in 2025.
Full-year numbers show BYD delivered about 2.26M battery-electric cars in 2025, while Tesla delivered about 1.63M to 1.64M. That makes BYD the worldâs biggest seller of fully electric vehicles on an annual basis.
BYD plays the volume game better right now with a wider lineup, more aggressive pricing, and a supply chain thatâs closer to the metal, especially in batteries, which still decide the economics of an EV.
They also pushed harder outside China, with roughly 1M vehicles sold overseas in 2025, which matters because you do not take the global crown by winning one home market alone.
Tesla, meanwhile, has been squeezed by heavier competition and softer demand in key regions, and it is paying the price for a lineup that has not refreshed fast enough for how quickly this market moves.
And yet Tesla is still valued like a different species of company. Markets are not pricing Tesla as âa car company that sells cars,â they are pricing optionality in autonomy, software, energy storage, and robotics, plus the idea that if Tesla cracks any of those at scale, the profit pool looks nothing like traditional auto.
BYD is executing like a monster manufacturer, but it is still valued more like manufacturing, with tighter margins, brutal price pressure, and heavier exposure to how regulators and geopolitics treat Chinese exports.
Do you think the next 5 years belong to the best manufacturer, or the company that turns cars into a software platform?
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