0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2 million units
REST OF THE WORLDU.S.
(281,000 UNITS IN 2018)
CHINA
(792,000
UNITS IN 2018)
2010 2012 2014 2016 2018
FULL-ELECTRIC VEHICLES SOLD ANNUALLY, BY GEOGRAPHY
TESLA MODEL 3
NISSAN LEAF
BAIC EC180/EC220
BYD YUAN
BYD E5
TOP-SELLING FULL-ELECTRIC VEHICLES GLOBALLY IN THE PAST YEAR
83,720
68,674
60,145
56,342
SOURCES:
BLOOMBERG NEF
CHINA ASSOCIATION OF AUTOMOBILE
MANUFACTURERS, WOOD MACKENZIE
199,952 UNITS*
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000 units soldTOP MANUFACTURERS OF FULL-ELECTRIC VEHICLES GLOBALLY
JAC
NISSAN
BYD
BAIC
TESLA
CHINESE MANUFACTURER
OTHER
2012 2014 2016 2018
* 12 MONTHS ENDING MARCH 31, 2019
110
FORTUNE.COM // SEPTEMBER 2019
Kong Stock Exchange in 2002. It began
selling combustion cars in 2003 and electric
vehicles—taxis as well as buses—in 2010.
Its early EVs were just modified versions of
gas-powered cars. But around 2014, BYD’s
R&D department began designing an all-new
vehicle architecture—known in the auto busi-
ness as a “platform”—in an effort to optimize
the particular attributes of the electric vehicle
by designing one from the ground up. Cars
based on what BYD calls this “E-platform”
began hitting the market last year.
BYD has benefited mightily from home-
town government support. The agency that
regulates Shenzhen’s taxis required that local
taxi companies switch to EVs to maintain
their permits to operate—and it doled out
subsidies over the past few years totaling
about $510 million to bring the price of each
EV taxi down to that of a comparable combus-
tion model, says Zeng Hao, deputy director at
the agency. Today, all but about 100 of Shen-
zhen’s 21,000 taxis are electric cars—all built,
naturally, by Shenzhen’s own BYD.
Anyone who assumes a Chinese electric car
is a rattling econobox might want to take one
of BYD’s new models for a spin. It lacks the
it’s-good-to-be-king ride and feel of that crown
jewel of the EV realm, the Tesla Model S. But
it also lags the Model S’s China sticker price,
which is upwards of $100,000. Loaded, the
E-platform’s top model, the Tang, has a sticker
price of about $51,000, after subsidies. A basic
BYD model at the E-platform’s lower end can
be had, after subsidies, for about $8,500.
The company’s leadership doesn’t appear
overly worried about the new competition at
home and from abroad. “We feel confident,”
says Lian Yubo, BYD’s senior vice president for
passenger-car R&D, noting that BYD has been
at the EV game longer than essentially anyone.
“We mastered all the skills by ourselves.”
One of those skills is the manufacturing of
an obscure electronic switch, crucial to electric
cars’ controls, called an insulated-gate bipolar
transistor, or IGBT. Most automakers buy
their IGBTs from parts suppliers. But surging
demand for electric cars has created a market
shortage of IGBTs. BYD isn’t constrained by
that shortage; in the city of Ningbo, some 700
miles northeast of Shenzhen, it has its own
IGBT factory, part of a unit known within the
China is easily the world’s biggest market for electric-
vehicle sales. And Chinese companies are among the
biggest sellers not named Tesla.Racing Ahead in EVsTesla Model 3