BYD has become the largest electric car manufacturer in the world (Getty Images)

During a television interview conducted by Bloomberg News with Elon Musk, CEO of the American company Tesla, in 2011, the American billionaire laughed mockingly at the products of the Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD and refused to consider them a threat to the throne of his company.

Musk said, laughing mockingly: “Have you seen their car? I don’t think it’s attractive. The technology is not very powerful, and they are facing serious problems in their country of China, and I think their focus should be on addressing these problems in their home country.” Then he added: “They have to make sure that they will not "They die in China first" before they dream of competing with Tesla.

This was 11 years ago, but now BYD has surpassed Tesla as the largest maker of electric cars in the world, as it sold 526 thousand cars in the last quarter of last year 2023. In contrast, Tesla sold only 484 thousand cars, and also produced BYD will produce more than 3 million electric and hybrid cars in 2023, while Tesla produced only 1.81 million electric cars that year, making the Chinese company occupy the throne that Tesla monopolized for many years, according to what the British newspaper “Financial Times” recently reported.

The Chinese company's cars are sold at a lower price than the American company's cars, and are in wide demand in various countries of the world, including the United States, the stronghold of the American company.

How did the Chinese company that started manufacturing mobile phone batteries become the world's electric car giant?

Modest capital

The story began in 1995 when Chinese chemist Wang Quanfu founded BYD in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a huge technology center in the country.

The company was established with a modest capital of 2.5 million Chinese yuan ($351,000), and only 20 employees worked in the company at that time, according to what CNBC reported.

In 1996, the small company began manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, the type found in our modern smartphones, and this coincided with the growth of the world's mobile phone industry.

The first sign of success was BYD's contract with the two largest mobile phone manufacturers at the time, Nokia and Motorola, in 2000, as the startup began supplying the batteries it manufactured to these two companies.

In 2002, BYD was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, riding the wave of its success in the lithium-ion battery industry.

BYD Automotive blew up

The company did not begin to think about entering the world of the automobile industry until 2003 when it acquired a small car manufacturing company called "Xian Xinchuan Automobile", and two years later, it launched its first car under the name "F3", and it was a car that ran on fossil fuels, but it launched the first car It was electric in 2008 under the name “F3DM”, beginning a success story whose chapters continue to this day.

In the same year (2008), the company succeeded in attracting an investment worth $230 million from Berkshire Hathaway, a subsidiary of the American billionaire Warren Buffett, which gave great impetus to the startup’s ambitions.

BYD continued to move forward in the field of the electric car industry, making another major shift in 2020 when it launched a new advanced battery under the name “Blade” that greatly helped in the growth and development of the company’s products.

The Blade is a lithium iron phosphate battery, and at the time many battery makers were moving away from it because they believed it had poor energy density, meaning it was too heavy for the amount of energy it could provide.

But BYD described its new battery as a breakthrough that provides good energy density and high levels of safety. The company has already begun using this battery in its cars, and the results have been amazing for everyone.

The company sold about 131,000 electric cars powered by a pure Blade battery in 2020, and last year 2023, the company sold 1.57 million electric cars powered by a pure Blade battery, and it now sits on the throne of the electric car industry in the world, according to CNBC.

Secrets of success

The Blade battery is only one of the secrets, but there are other factors behind this amazing success of the Chinese company, perhaps the most important of which is: “vertical integration, according to Bloomberg.”

Vertical integration was crucial to the company's success. Instead of relying on other companies to obtain the spare parts, components and systems that the car needed, the company relied on manufacturing most of its components within its own factories, which helped the company produce relatively cheap cars compared to other companies' cars, including This includes Tesla, which was purchasing many of the systems, components, and spare parts it needed for its cars from other companies, which contributed to raising its prices and its inability to compete with the prices of BYD’s cheaper and better electric cars.

This increased the company's sales, and helped it offer a wide range of affordable and relatively cheap electric cars, maximizing sales while expanding its presence into new markets that had been exclusive to others until recently.

After China overtook the United States, South Korea and Germany, it is now competing with Japan for global leadership in automobile exports, and in a sector still dominated by big names such as Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors, companies such as BYD are beginning to achieve serious successes and breakthroughs.

The American Wall Street Journal reported that BYD received significant assistance from the Chinese government during its journey.

Currently, the company’s ambitions are not limited to pushing Elon Musk and Tesla to second place only, but it is now building factories in Europe, Latin America, and across Asia as part of a broader effort to expand sales across these continents, and its cars and buses appear in cities all over the world, including the United States. .

As the world increasingly turns to electric-powered cars, the Chinese automaker is preparing to face the future with great confidence and hope.

Lesson for entrepreneurs

The name “BYD” is an abbreviation for 3 English words: “Build Your Dreams” meaning “Make Your Dreams” in Arabic. Perhaps this name, which is both a name and a slogan, is a guide for Arab entrepreneurs who dream of building their own companies and brands. The dream is... It alone is not enough, but you have to work hard and diligently to create your dreams and turn them into reality.

The experience of the young chemist Wang Quanfu, who dreamed of making batteries and building cars, and started his company with only 20 employees and a small capital, is a lesson for many in how to insist and persevere in achieving dreams, and even making them, just as Quanfu created the largest electric car manufacturing company in the world.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites