BYD Beats Tesla in Europe for First Time with 169% Sales Surge
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
Makes you want to ask, "say, Elon, how's that full-self-driving going?"
A wonderful observation.
Has someone made a stab at describing these new paradigms of advertising and value? I don't think I've seen exactly this stated or named, but there's a lot of writing and thinking out there. If it strikes anyone reading this, links welcome.
Specifically, it seems like advertising may have gone from "the quality of the product doesn't matter", to "the product existing doesn't matter". Quite a big leap.
Meme stocks have a way of defying normal economic gravity and irritating traditional investors up until they don't, and when that happens their demise is usually rapid and complete.
That’s a dangerous game to play. What’s the opposite of a falling knife?
Optimus with the full-self-catering package to slice and dice any flesh it finds in what it thinks is the kitchen.
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2024/02/the-...
This gist of it is that central banks tried to stimulate investment in the economy by purchasing bonds, which lowered their yields and made them unattractive to institutional investors. As a result, institutional investors had no choice but to use the QE printed money to invest in stocks instead. This greatly repressed the risk in the stock market, while decoupling it from profits, because for a long time “numbers would only go up”.
Separately, the repressed borrowing costs (another intended effect of QE) enabled big tech to consolidate their monopolies, creating the attention harvesting platforms of today. Alongside inequality also being amplified by QE, those platforms started to favour rage baiting.
The combination of high risk appetite + algorithmic promotion of outrage enabled a kind of business model which is based on nothing except ridiculous dreams. Elon and his Tesla are therefore the quintessential creatures of the era.
Last year, roughly 90 million new light vehicles were sold worldwide. 1.8 million of these were Tesla --- about 2% of the total.
Earlier this year, Tesla's market capitalization was $1.5 TRILLION --- more than virtually all the major auto manufacturers in the world COMBINED.
Can you say, "Ridiculously over priced"?
How can a company's valuation have seemingly no tie at all to how they're doing as a company? Just on the surface that seems absurd. But that's not even my concern - my concern is that this happens and nobody seems to care. As if there's very real exploits in our financial markets and nobody seems to bat an eye.
Just the fact Tesla has somehow managed to do this should be making us uneasy! But then again, I don't understand the stock market, and nobody understands the economy, so I guess it's fine.
The model 3 didn't come out until 2017. Before that, Tesla only made niche Model X/S cars. That was a huge run up in just 8 years, who knows if that would have kept going if Musk didn't make the mistake of binding himself to Trump.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/05/17/tesla-...
How many billionaires are willing to bet their life on a cell tower connection? How many people would be bold enough to ask them to?
Wait until those investors find out what China is investing in and actually succeeding in with automation, personal robots, and making self driving cars with affordable LIDAR (negating Tesla's camera bet).
This seems to be how Silicon Valley works. (Also Redmond.)
A captive audience, e.g., manipulated through intermediaries like Twitter, etc., that is prohibited from considering past or present failures and forced to remain fixated on a future that Silicon Valley assures can be predicted, but only by Silicon Vallley and its devotees.
Can Silicon Valley be "disrupted".
Also, a lot of European car brands' EV models are also rebadged Chinese models or the brand is Chinese owned. MG, Volvo, Dacia Spring
MG, Volvo/Polestar/Lynk & Co, or Lotus are brands owned by Chinese automotive groups SAIC and Geely.
You can cross most European countries with one stop.
Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.
If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"?
If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
I have heard this can be a problem in California but I rarely go there.
... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across.
(Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe.
On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
To be fair, 20 minutes for an L3 charge from 20 to 80% is technically under an hour.
In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible.
I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.
Does Europe have that much variation?
In areas where the ratio is low a non-EV can be cheaper than an EV, especially if that non-EV is a hybrid. In about 1/3 of the states a Prius beats an average EV in highway driving and in around 1/6th the Prius wins in city driving. In around 1/6th the Prius will even beat the most efficient EVs in both highway and city.
It's opposite in places with a higher ratio where even a Prius cannot come near the low energy costs of an EV. In roughly 1/5th of the states gas would have to fall to below around $1.70/gal for the Prius to match a typical EV for highway driving, and to around $1.50/gal to match the most efficient highway EVs. Those are gas prices that even Trump probably can't fantasize about.
Note that the above was all using residential electricity prices. Commercial EV chargers usually charge quite a bit more. I'm in one of the states with a high gas/electricity price ratio and I think EVs still win here with commercial charger prices but not by much. Without having run the numbers, my guess is that for most road trips that span several states, especially if the are going east/west, a Prius is going to be the energy cost champion.
I'm curious if there are any road trip planners that can take all this into account? Say you've got an EV and a non-EV. Are there any where you can give your destination, places along the way you want to see, what cars you have available, and how much extra time you are willing to spend to save money, and it will figure out which car can do the trip for with the least energy costs?
You mean .09 to .34 but I agree there's a lot of variation. I pay about 13 cents at home and my fuel bill is around 1/4 the $ per mile in the Model Y as it is for my ICE car when I recharge at home.
Superchargers are much more expensive; they're typically a minimum of 25 cents per kWh. But even on long road trips using supercharger energy I still pay a lot less per mile than I would for gasoline unless I drive over 80 mph (wind resistance is the efficiency killer for EVs.)
If you want to run the numbers yourself, a Model Y typically can go a mile on 250-300 Wh if relative airspeed is under 60 mph. (I look for tailwinds with windy.com on road trips. I find this fun but I don't expect that's a universal emotion.)
I have not seen a trip planner like you describe. The Tesla will tell you the supercharger rates before you arrive so you could choose a different one but that's about it.
Tesla tries very hard to keep you from running out of energy. Once I drove away from a supercharger toward the middle of nowhere. My destination was a guest house that I knew had a Level 2 charger. But the car didn't know that. As I approached the halfway point the car started nagging me "You are approaching the point of no return. Turn back NOW to avoid running out of energy."
I hit 'Ignore', laughed and kept driving. The car was wrong but I was grateful it had my back.
Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations.
A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it.
Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations.
https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charg...
https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-networ...
I've heard that the US has a lot of "food deserts" where you have to go a long way to get groceries, but is it really that bad?
More importantly, the route Google Maps gives me to Paris (1051 km from city to city) is supposedly 11 hr 31 min. Even if the car could do that in one trip, neither my bladder nor my stomach could.
That's not the image or the cars they're pushing in Europe. Their cheapest car, at least in Sweden, costs more than the VW id3, and their flagship SUV that they're pushing hard starts at around the same price as a BMW iX with all the 'luxury' frills to match.
What's TACO?
Surely there were pretty clear signals that a significant number of those people would vote with their wallets based on his politics.
And as everyone was saying last year "Trump can't be THAT bad", you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
And the disappearing people, threats against allies, stripping of hard fought rights, siding with Putin, airbrushing women and non-white men from the history books, declaring Gaza should become a holiday resort and spreading FUD about white genocide etc etc etc
Tesla were always a weird fit for the European markets. They are too big and especially too wide. The finish is haphazard. At their price point, which is high for all the segments they compete in, they don't really compare favorably to European brands. They used to be able to compete on battery performance and drive trains but that's hardly the case anymore. It was always pretty clear that Tesla is entirely driven from the USA and has no idea of how and what to sell to European in a way not too dissimilar to other American car makers which could never really succeed in Europe either.
Meanwhile, BYD is genuinely competitive in Europe. Their cars are well positioned in the middle of every segments they are in. They would actually be on the more accessible side without tariffs. Their design is nothing to talk about but they blend well with other cars. Their size is great. They do ok confort-wise, nothing extraordinary but not too shabby either.
Basically, they are ok cars at an ok price, something which can't be said of Tesla.
EDIT: Yeah. So far this year, the id.4 is number 18 overall, Kia EV3 is 26th, Tesla Model 3 is 27th, Tesla Y is 86th. So Telsa's... not quite irrelevant, EV-wise, but kinda getting there (note that Hyundai, Kia, VW, BYD etc all have a bunch of models vs Tesla's two models, and Tesla's still trailing). https://stats.beepbeep.ie
I live in the US state (Washington) where energy prices on average are most favorable to EVs (for people who can charge at home) and I'm in the part of the state where gas prices are particularly high.
I'd expect then to see a fair number of EVs. For the maybe three when I'm out driving I've tried to count the EVs I see.
At first I'd see 2 or 3 Teslas per 100 cars (I excluded vehicles that were obviously commercial vehicles), and an occasional Rivian. More recently it is 3 to 5 Teslas and still the occasional Rivian.
The only other EVs I've counted in the last month or so are 1 Hyundai IONIQ 5, 1 Kia EV6, 1 Nissan Ariya, 1 Nissan Leaf, a couple or so Chevy Bolts, and a Ford Mustang Mach-E.
I suspect that there are a lot more than that but I'm missing them because all of those companies make non-EVs too. With a Tesla all I've got to do is see the "T" and I know it is an EV.
Say I see a Chevy SUV. I need to get a close enough look to identify the model. If it is a model for which they have both EV and ICE versions, such as an Equinox or Blazer, I then have to look for details to decide if I'm looking at the EV version of the ICE version. Let's say it is an Equinox. The EV has those weird flat pop out door handles whereas the ICE (I believe) has normal handles. The EV has the charge port on the front driver side, the ICE has the gas intake on the back driver side. The EV has a different grille design (but for some colors they look quite similar if you don't get a close look).
Or say I see a Hyundai Kona. Open these [1][2] in two different browser tabs and flip between them. It looks like just minor stylistic differences.
You can rotate them to look from different angles. If you see a Kona on your left the differences are just a slightly different fender, different wheel design, and slight profile differences in the grille and rear bumper. Easy to miss.
Heck, I have a Kona SEL Electric and if I hadn't just flipped between those two pages looking at them from the right side I would not have been able to tell if another Kona SEL next to me was gas or electric, because those are difference in features of the car that I've simply never noticed.
I only spotted the IONIQ 5, EV6, Ariya, Leaf, and Bolts because they happened to be going in the same direction as me and so when we passed I has able to see the model name, and those particular models are only available as EVs. If they had been going in the opposite direction I probably only would have got the make.
I only spotted the Mach-E because I saw the Mustang logo and the car was one of the ones where the grille does not have a bunch of openings that look like air intakes so I knew I was probably looking at an EV version. If it had been one of the Mach-Es whose grille does have those openings I probably would have missed it.
[1] https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona/sel
[2] https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona-electric/sel
[1]: https://fortune.com/2025/05/21/elon-musk-fears-tesla-demand-...
> The Tesla CEO asserts he’s seeing a major rebound in customer interest for his EVs despite persistent evidence to the contrary. “The stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if things weren’t in good shape,” he said.
> Tesla’s return to the elite club of trillion-dollar market cap stocks is all the evidence Elon Musk needs to convince him the worst of the blowback over his political activism is over.
Like a conman losing its grips on the victims' confidence, he entered the phase of "do not believe your eyes and ears" phase of the swindle.
Last earnings showed a steep decline in sales, just around my house in Sweden I've seen 3 neighbours with a new BYD the past 3 months, the one right across my house used to have a Model 3 which I haven't seen in a while.
I can only definitely call him a liar on the next earnings report so there's some 2 months before we can see actual figures and not just his words...
It's unthinkable for me to give any sum of money to - let alone purchase a car from - a company associated with neo-Nazism.
I couldn't care less about DOGE or anything Musk is doing with US domestic politics, it's really just that salute that would prevent me from buying a Tesla.
It seems inconceivable to some in US how some ”tropes” are not just ”harmless larping” but actually in a specific environments deeply insulting gestures.
I do realize the deep wounds nazism caused are plusibly hard to understand if one is not european.
But that does not really excuse someone who clearly signals he strives to be a thoughtleader.
In general it’s Pauling and Vitamin-C again. You are great at something and thus presume those intrinsic strengths serve equally well in some other context.
Human failures aside, hurtfull things are hurtfull and they cannot be reasoned away. Forgiven - sure, in right circumstances. Forgotten as well.
The second stupidest thing he did was build a huge EV manufacturing academy for the Chinese.
I always thought this was odd --- he could have farmed out select parts and pieces to China manufacturing with the final assembly in Europe but he went all in --- and helped accelerate China surpassing him.
It reminds me of a line from a movie, "Look at you now, you stupid fvck".
Ofc the impact to Tesla-as-a-business is a different matter.
Instead of the teacher, Musk is now the student.
https://www.automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com/electrifica...
https://eletric-vehicles.com/byd/byd-rolls-out-in-house-self...
It really isn't or at least not just price. BYD, at least in Sweden, are not cheap cars in an absolute sense. Many car brands have cars that are cheaper than the cheapest car BYD sells in Sweden. MG, Peugeot, Citroen and others all have smaller and cheaper EVs if what you mainly care about is price. BYDs focus is much more on value for money at the mid level.
Right? Surprised to see speculation about something easily disprovable on this forum.
Oh and today DOGE is being blamed for the biggest rise in unemployment in years [3], which caused yet another stock market heart attack yesterday.
Who is the bigger security threat here?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/20/raf-fighters...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/politics/trump-ukraine...
[3] https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/business/jobless-claims-post-l...
The worlds global, you have to import a lot of tech from elsewhere, and now both major suppliers (China and the USA) are cuddling up to a rogue nation that is invading a neighbor. They are between a rock and a hard place right now.
I hope they get back on top, though. I just don't see how.
Quality is fine (except their rust protection, last I checked), but not making a new mass market car in 5 years, and just 2 lackluster refreshes to pretty milquetoast cars, and no technical updates is a bit baffling with tens of billions of cash in the books (hopefully non-cooked). Their 1.5 models on offer feel quite dated, even with the refresh.
Makes you wonder if, perhaps, doing small incremental updates and spending time on fart apps and light shows is perhaps less successful in the long run than doing bigger updates every 3-5 years.
The rest is a bunch of broken promises.
You think sales would be declining anywhere near as rapidly if it weren't for the nazi salutes, DOGE, and white genocide stuff etc.? Talking about comparatively small strategy errors in a company that was such a big force in the market seems like painting over the elephant in the room when the CEO is going off the rails and talking about exporting his personal brand of neo-facism via threats to "Make Europe Great Again," openly funding far right groups who are later declared illegal extremists etc.
There's bad business and there's BAD business.
Tesla yearly sales stopped growing in 2024. Also declining in China, where they don't care about what Musk is doing. Musk is still well-liked there, in fact.
Competition is heating up and Tesla have been focusing on stock pumping stratagems instead of their core product line, and continuing to dig their own grave, but Musk's megalomania surely has accelerated that a ton.
I know and I'm saying it's misleading to do so when column A is orders of magnitude bigger than column B or C. Column A has had the effect that people are vandalising the cars and burning down the dealerships. Column B is just indicative of the normal ebb and flow of the sector.
> Also declining in China, where they don't care about what Musk is doing. Musk is still well-liked there, in fact.
What are you basing that on? The United States has become an agressor against Chinese interests and poisoned the waters of free trade under Mr Musk's stewardship.
Admittedly the only Chinese people I'm in regular contact with are all living in Europe but it's my experience that they're universally appalled by what we've seen.
Simple. Musk steps away and the company issues a full statement distancing themselves from Musk and his politics. Tesla negotiates an end to its fights with the unions in Europe. Stop focusing on the Cybertruck and start making an updated Model 3 and a lower priced Model 2. Maybe push out a new Model S to take on the high end market while you're at it. Perhaps do some sort of marketing campaign to highlight that they're now just a cool car company again.
People in Europe still like Tesla the car, and would happily start driving them again given some incentives.
I'll tell you right now: the stock will plummet. That's my prediction.
Also.. I want to know: people say that Tesla owners should sell their card if they don’t want them keyed.
Who should they sell them to?
Split the hype part of the company from the profitable but dull part.
Robots + FSD + Elon Musk -> hype part. Merge with xAI for full effect.
Cars + Utility Storage + new dull CEO -> profitable dull part.
... I mean, why?
Why? As someone terrified by recent political developments it's unfathomable to me that anyone could have any well wishes for them as long as Mr Musk profits from their success.
What "Discoveries"?
>Tesla-unfriendly local environment
It is Musk who is unfriendly to Europe.