Has Tesla lost its power?

As if losing 80% value in market value wasn’t enough. Latest figures show that Elon Musk’s Tesla has lost its position as number one EV maker in the world to BYD, a Chinese company, well at least for the quarter.

Why ?

BYD led total sales in Q4 by a 30,000+ unit margin making it the second EV company to ever reach surpass Tesla after Nissan in 2016. Their market is mostly in China, and they have low cost EV’s with a quality comparable to Tesla.

BYD has outpaced Tesla at making multiple lines of EVs catering for consumers, commercial users and even executives through sedans, SUVs and Trucks. Much like Samsung they just happen to put out more stuff much faster. Tesla is however like Apple, perfect everything, go slow but do it the Apple way.

BYD also being a China based company, leverages on supply chain economies of scale to deliver much cheaper cars. It also helps that China makes up half of the EV customers in the world.

Looking ahead

While the yearly sales cup still goes to Tesla, this last quarter of 2023. The ides of a great demise art nigh. 2024 will be the unravelling of a long awaited rivalry now that BYD has proved its worthiness the gloves are definitely on. But so far it seems Tesla is losing its market leader powers.