BYD has a higher overall gross margin (i.e., cost of goods sold vs. what you sell them for) and much higher when just looking at automotive gross margin, excluding regulatory credits. BYD invests more in R&D and employs by far the most R&D engineers of any automaker. BYD has more clean tech IP. BYD is more vertically integrated. BYD makes all of its own batteries and supplies most of the materials within them. BYD has a larger business beyond automotive with a larger electronics, ESS, and solar presence (although these are lower-margin segments). BYD has a much larger commercial vehicle presence. And BYD is selling most of their vehicles below the $30,000 price point that Elon has been promising for over a decade but has never delivered upon.

BYD’s sales are growing while Tesla’s sales are stagnating. BYD has been capacity constrained and has multiple new factories under construction or ramping up. BYD has fresher product and more new product on the way. BYD has an 18 month full product development cycle, using a comprehensive digital twin. That is a shorter period than the average Tesla product launch delay. Combined with very flexible factories (U8 and Seagull are made in the same factory), they have the agility to rapidly shift to meet market needs.