BYD’s Vice President on the Price of Global Success
Time · Charlie Campbell ·
BYD's Stella Li discusses trade barriers, the backlash against Chinese EVs, and the company’s ambition to overtake Toyota.
Last summer, while on an assignment in Ethiopia, I found myself daydreaming while trapped in Addis Ababa’s rush hour traffic. Staring out from my gridlocked taxi, I was struck by something remarkable: on all four sides were vehicles produced by Chinese manufacturer BYD.
Except it wasn’t really that remarkable. For years now, BYDs have been a regular feature of my travels to even the most far-flung places, plying streets from Yerevan to Yangon and beyond. Last year, the firm, whose initials stand for “Build Your Dreams,” became the world’s top purveyor of EVs, selling 4.6 million vehicles across 120 countries and regions, while accruing revenue of $111 billion. It was perhaps more surprising I wasn’t sitting in a BYD myself.
“If you look at a lot of markets, we say, ‘there's been a boom in EVs,’” says Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Actually, it's just BYD. They're single-handedly creating markets in some countries, which is remarkable.”