Business & Economics
BYD Clinches 2025 Global EV Sales Crown From Tesla
For the first time, Tesla slipped to #2 after its 2025 deliveries fell nearly 9%, allowing China’s BYD—whose own volumes jumped—to become the world’s top battery-electric vehicle seller.
Focusing Facts
- Tesla delivered 1.64 million EVs in 2025, an 8.6 % year-over-year decline and its second straight annual drop.
- BYD sold 2.26 million battery-electric cars in 2025, up roughly 28 % from 2024 and 620,000 more than Tesla.
- U.S. federal $7,500 EV tax credit ended on 30 Sep 2025, after which Tesla’s Q4 deliveries fell 15.6 % to 418,227 units.
Context
Industry leadership hand-offs are rarely permanent: GM surrendered the global auto crown to Toyota in 2008, only to briefly win it back in 2011. Likewise, Nokia’s 2007 smartphone dominance evaporated within five years as Apple and Android upended cost structures and ecosystems. BYD’s ascent echoes these shifts—leveraging vertical battery integration (reminiscent of Ford’s River Rouge complex in the 1920s) and aggressive expansion just as Western subsidies retrench. The episode exposes two long-wave currents: China’s industrial upgrading from low-cost assembly to technology originator, and the market’s tilt from hardware margins to software- and service-led valuations (robotaxis, “Optimus,” etc.). Whether Tesla’s pivot to autonomous platforms becomes its IBM-style reinvention or a BlackBerry-like fade will shape supply chains, labor, and energy demand far beyond the 2020s. In a century-scale view, the more durable storyline may be that the epicenter of automotive innovation has shifted eastward—mirroring Japan’s rise after the 1973 oil shock—with implications for geopolitics, trade policy, and the global carbon transition.
Perspectives
Tech and science outlets critical of Musk/Tesla
e.g., Ars Technica, NBC Southern California — They portray Tesla’s second year of falling deliveries as a self-inflicted collapse driven by stale models, safety failures and Elon Musk’s polarizing right-wing politics. The reporting assumes the worst about Tesla’s future, a stance that attracts a tech-savvy, often left-leaning readership but risks minimizing any legitimate upside the company still enjoys in markets or advanced R&D.
Investor-oriented financial media
e.g., Bloomberg Law, Gulf-Times, Yahoo Finance — They concede BYD has taken the sales crown yet stress that investors remain upbeat, citing Tesla’s rising share price and ambitions in robotaxis, energy storage and humanoid robots. By focusing on future profit narratives and ETF plays, these outlets serve an investing audience and can gloss over the immediate operational weakness that threatens those long-range bets.
Asia-based international news agencies
e.g., Kyodo News+, Anadolu Ajansı — They emphasize BYD’s 28 % sales surge and cost advantages to illustrate Asia’s ascendancy in the EV race while noting Tesla’s slump amid expiring U.S. tax credits and political backlash. Regional pride and geopolitical considerations may lead them to spotlight Chinese success and underplay the impact of Western tariffs or the broader slowdown in global EV demand.