The motor industry is fond of an acronym, and now there’s a new one to roll off the tongue along with BMW, SUV, ABS, GTI, MPV, AMG and the other Alphabetti Spaghetti arrangements: BYD.
It stands for ‘Build Your Dreams’. BYD comes to us all the way from China. If you can remember watching any of the Euro 2024 football tournament you may remember the pitchside advertising hoardings were saturated with BYD logos. These were often more interesting than what was happening in the match, though you may not have immediately associated BYD with your next new car.
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BYD may not yet have the brand recognition of BMW but it is already a Big Yummy Deal in the automotive world. Here are just four reasons why:
- First, this time last year, it overtook Tesla as the world’s top selling electric car manufacturer.
- Second, BYD is the best-selling brand in China, the world’s largest car market.
- Third, it designs and manufactures its own batteries, which makes it a rarity among car-makers.
- And fourth, it is the third most valuable car company in the world, behind Tesla and Toyota. Not bad for a company that only made its first car in 2005 and its first EV in 2009.
That newcomers like Tesla and BYD are already considered to be worth more than established automotive giants like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, General Motors, Volkswagen and Ford shows just how rapidly and decisively the car industry’s tectonic plates are shifting as a result of the move to battery power.
With its manufacturing might, resources, technical and software know-how, and scale, China is well placed to capitalise in this disrupted market. This is a political conversation about protectionism as much as it is one about the relative strengths and weaknesses of Chinese cars compared to European or American rivals.
That’s why Donald Trump has been babbling about imposing tariffs on Chinese cars that would make them all but unsellable in the US, and why the EU is pressing ahead with duties of up to 45% on EVs built in China from next month for an initial five-year period.
Read more: Which Chinese car manufacturers are making EVs?
Modern cars - especially EVs - are essentially connected devices, like your smartphone, on wheels, capable of gobbling up all sorts of personal data. As a result there have been concerns in some quarters about whether Chinese cars pose, as President Joe Biden would have it, a national security threat. There have been similar noises around other Chinese tech, from TikTok to Huawei. As with tariffs, the question of whether the Chinese Communist Party is spying on us in our cars - and whether you think it matters - is largely a political one. There is nonetheless a valid question for all car manufacturers, Chinese or otherwise: in a world where your car is always connected to the internet, is there any reason to think it is less vulnerable to a cyber-attack or virus than any other computer device or system? It seems to me that this is worth resolving before self-driving cars are let loose on our roads.
But back to today. Europe has already been receiving China-built cars from non-Chinese brands which have set up plants there, including Polestar and Tesla. The volume of cars coming this way is going to grow exponentially as China’s home-grown manufacturers sharpen their export focus.
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MG, an old British nameplate revived by the Chinese state-owned SAIC Motor, has enjoyed success with its line-up, notably the electric MG4. Expect more of the same from BYD and others. As a further sign of its intent, BYD is building a European factory in Hungary.
For now, BYD has landed in our market with a bunch of made-in-China models, all of which are curiously named.
There’s the Sealion 7 (a big SUV), Dolphin (a value-for-money small hatchback), Atto 3 (Nissan Qashqai rival), Seal (look out, Tesla Model 3…) and Seal U DM-i (plug-in hybrid family SUV, and the only car it offers that isn’t a pure electric).
I don’t know about you, but these aren’t the sorts of car that comes immediately to mind when invited to ‘build a dream’. None of them are exactly a Ferrari or Bugatti, are they? It’s hard to imagine a BYD Sealion being a car-mad child’s pin-up on their bedroom wall.
Nonetheless, it’s a range that represents a serious effort to take on the best-selling mainstream car-makers in Europe. BYD’s arrival is less of a dream and more of a nightmare for struggling Volkswagen, Ford and the rest of them.
