Cheap vehicles, growing market share, a new super-fast charger — Chinese electric vehicle company BYD is taking the fight to Tesla, as the American EV maker’s global sales slump.
The company made $170 billion in revenue in 2024, which beat market analysts’ predictions and soared past Tesla’s annual revenue of $155.5 billion.
BYD reported a 73 per cent surge in net profit to a record $3.3 billion for the fourth quarter last year.
The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares are up more than 50 per cent since the start of January and hit a record high last week.
BYD plans to roll out 4,000 of the superchargers across China before installing them overseas. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick )
The Chinese car maker is on track to dominate the EV market — its overseas shipments jumped almost 72 per cent last year, making up 10 per cent of its overall car sales, indicating its growing relevance outside of China.
The company has also announced it wants to build a third European plant, this time in Germany.
Graeme Hughes from Griffith University said BYD out-performing Tesla was the result of a combination of increased hate towards Elon Musk and BYD’s rapid expansion.
“Elon Musk’s star power had originally helped with Tesla sales. The UK market alone has dropped 45 per cent in the last month, people are concerned not only by what [Elon Musk] is doing but what [his actions] means about them,” he said.
De-badging, re-badging, and even destroying Tesla cars have become more common as owners shun the Tesla brand.
Meanwhile, BYD has been heavily investing in its manufacturing processes, Mr Hughes said, to vastly improve its product from where it was just a few years ago.
“The evolution has happened quite rapidly so they’ve been investing a significant amount of money back into their platforms,” Mr Hughes said.
“It’s [EVs] becoming a robust ecosystem, we have substantial players in the market. Both historical gasoline players and the new evolution of the Teslas and the BYDs. We’re going to see further growth in this space over the next 10 years in particular.”
Super-fast charging to rival Tesla
Its latest financial result come after BYD announced new charging technology that promises to fully power EVs in as little time as it takes to fill up a petrol car.
BYD claims its new Super e-Platform will reach peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts, giving a vehicle enough power to travel 400 kilometres within five minutes.
That charging speed is twice as fast as the current fastest charging technology on the market — Tesla’s superchargers.
BYD’s market capitalisation remains smaller than Tesla’s which currently sits at $US800 billion. (AP: David Zalubowski, File)
BYD founder Wang Chuanfu said his company had been developing the technology to ease charging anxiety.
“We have been pursuing a goal to make the charging time of electric vehicles as short as the refuelling time of petrol vehicles,” he said.
“This is the first time in the industry that the unit of megawatt (charge) has been achieved on charging power.“
Charging something as big as a car in 5 minutes expels an enormous amount of heat, and BYD claims it’s getting around this with an “all liquid-cooled megawatt flash charging terminal system”, which manages the heat when charging so battery life isn’t affected and ensures it’s safe.
The ultra-fast technology will only be available on two new BYD models hitting the market in April that will have batteries designed to handle such fast charging speeds.
About 4,000 of the chargers will be rolled out in China first.
Until now, BYD owners have relied on other automakers’ charging facilities or those run by third parties to charge their vehicles.
While the development is a sign the EV infrastructure war is heating up, it has also added pressure on Tesla.
Five-minute charging ‘significant hurdle’ for grid
Stephen Bragg, the lead partner for motor energy industry services at Pitcher Partners told the ABC BYD’s new tech was “a big deal”.
“It’s very encouraging, one of the biggest issues with electric vehicles is the recharging time,” he said.
“I think one of the big drawbacks of owning an EV is you have to think about your trip, you have to plan things out, you have to work out if you can charge, so if you could charge the car in five minutes … it becomes quite compelling.”
While it’s great for China, the superchargers are unlikely to hit Aussie shores for a while. (AAP: Supplied)
Mr Bragg said the fastest chargers in Australia currently charge a car in about 20 to 30 minutes.
“But those require a significant amount of infrastructure, their own substation and direct line, and they cost about a million dollars. It’s a very expensive exercise to achieve 30 minutes or 20 minutes.
“To do five minutes it would be unheard of in Australia, at least at the moment. If everyone started to come and charge their batteries in five minutes, you could just imagine the amount of electricity required into the grid.
“To generate that much electricity would be a significant hurdle to get over.“
Mr Bragg said someone charging an EV in five minutes with Australia’s current infrastructure would black out an entire suburb “because it would just take all the electricity on the system”.
“There’s still a long way to go. One thing that’s difficult to do in Australia is build infrastructure so… a lot of hype and good hope, if it’s true. But until [there’s] mass adoption, it doesn’t really shift the needle.”
BYD ‘breakthrough’ could be used by other EV players
Seth Goldstein, chief financial analyst at Morningstar, said the BYD’s new battery that can charge in five minutes was a breakthrough that would eliminate the longer charge times that many current EVs have and would make charging take just as long as pumping petrol would have “little impact” on Tesla.
“Tesla and BYD competitors should either be working on their own solution to offer a charge below 10 minutes or look to license the technology from BYD,”
Mr Goldstein said.
Tesla is also working on ultra-fast charging — its current offering can add 270 kilometres of range in 15 minutes on a 500-kilowatt charger.
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Mercedes Benz has unveiled that its upcoming EV, can get 325 kilometres of range in 10 minutes.
“I see this as positive for BYD. They also sell batteries, so companies like Tesla, who already buy batteries from BYD, could buy the new batteries, which would reduce the impact of BYD’s new batteries on Tesla sales,” Mr Goldstein said.
“Tesla continues to reduce their charge time. We estimate Tesla’s new charge time will be 10 to 12 minutes — a big improvement versus today, but still slower than BYD.”
Mr Goldstein also said what would see Tesla lead the way again in EVs would be the roll out of its superior self-driving technology. Elon Musk has said the technology would be fully autonomous this year.
