Thread by @DThinkTanked

Let's understand this by unpacking BYD's crazy history!

1/ BYD was founded in 1995, making batteries for Nokia phones.

Today it's the world's #1 EV maker, operates its own fleet of mega ships, mines its own lithium, and sold 4.6 million vehicles in 2025.

This is the story of the most aggressive vertical integration in automotive history. 🧵

2/ Let's start with the numbers, because they're genuinely insane.

📊 BYD annual NEV sales:

2018: 247,000
2021: 721,000
2023: 3,020,000
2024: 4,272,000
2025: 4,600,000 ✅ World #1

That's an 18x increase in 7 years. Toyota took 70 years to get to that scale.

3/ In 2024 alone, BYD's revenue hit 777 billion yuan (~$107 billion USD) — up 23% YoY.
R&D spend: 54.2 billion yuan. That's MORE than their net profit.
They've outspent profits on R&D 13 out of 14 years. This isn't a company optimising for today. It's building a decade ahead.

4/ BYD stopped making petrol-only cars entirely in April 2022.
Cold turkey. Done. No ICE. No transition plan. Just: we're EV now.
Most legacy automakers are still "planning" their EV transitions. BYD already did it and moved on.

5/ Here's what makes BYD genuinely different from every other automaker:
They make:
→ The batteries
→ The chips (semiconductors)
→ The motors
→ The steel
→ The glass
→ The lithium (they own a mine)

And now... the ships to export it all.
Vertical integration taken to an extreme.

6/ Let's talk about the ships. 🚢

In January 2024, BYD launched its first car-carrier ship — the BYD Explorer No. 1. A 199.9m roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) vessel with capacity for 7,000 cars.

It departed Shenzhen loaded with EVs headed for the Netherlands and Germany.

Just the beginning.

7/ Why does BYD need its own ships?
Simple: the global RoRo shipping market was dominated by Japanese and Korean firms with long-standing relationships with Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai.
BYD was the new kid — and couldn't get enough capacity. So instead of complaining...
They built their own fleet.

8/ The fleet expanded fast:
🚢 BYD Explorer No.1 – Jan 2024 (chartered, 7,000 cars)
🚢 BYD Hefei – late 2024 (first BYD-OWNED vessel)
🚢 BYD Changzhou – Dec 2024 (7,000 cars)
🚢 BYD Shenzhen – 2025 (9,200 cars — world's LARGEST car carrier at launch)
🚢 BYD Changsha, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Jinan — following in 2025

8 ships total. All LNG dual-fuel. All built in China.

9/ The BYD Shenzhen deserves its own tweet.
At 219 metres long, it became the world's largest car carrier by capacity — 9,200 vehicles per voyage.
It runs on LNG AND has BYD's own battery packs on board to power the ship in low-emission port zones.
A ship powered partly by the same technology as the cars inside it.

10/ The full 8-ship fleet gives BYD the capacity to export over 1 million vehicles per year by sea.
That's their 2025 overseas sales target — 1 million units outside China.
They didn't wait for logistics to catch up. They built the logistics.

11/ Overseas sales are exploding:
🌍 2023: 242,000 exports (+334% YoY)
🌍 2024: 417,000 exports (+72% YoY)
🌍 2025 target: 800,000–1,000,000

Markets: UK (+567% in 2025), Spain (+317%), Australia, Brazil, Thailand, Southeast Asia. Europe is the key battleground.

12/ In the UK specifically:
BYD sold ~51,000 vehicles in 2025, up 567% YoY. They're now the UK's fastest-growing car brand.
No tariffs on Chinese BEVs in the UK (unlike the EU) = open season.
The Seal U DM-i SUV is their UK bestseller. And they just launched the entry-level Dolphin Surf.

13/ But BYD's ambition goes beyond just exporting from China.
They're building factories everywhere:

🏭 Hungary — first European factory (2026 production start)
🏭 Brazil — opened July 2025
🏭 Thailand — opened 2024
🏭 Uzbekistan — running since 2024
🏭 Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia — in progress

Control the car. Control the ship. Control the factory in the destination country.

14/ Meanwhile, BYD's product range is going upmarket fast.
Seagull: ~$10,000 EV — the people's car
Seal / Han: mid-range performance EVs
Yangwang U9: $140,000+ supercar that can "jump" all four wheels off the ground
Yangwang U8: luxury SUV that can float on water for 30 minutes
They're competing at every price point simultaneously.

15/ The battery business is equally massive.
BYD is the #2 battery supplier in the world — behind CATL.
Their customers include Tesla, Toyota, and Nio. Yes, BYD supplies batteries to its own competitors.
They hold 16.4% of global EV battery market share.

16/ Cash position as of end 2024:
💰 Cash reserves: 154.9 billion yuan (~$21 billion)
📉 Interest-bearing debt: down to just 28.6 billion yuan
🔬 Over 110,000 engineers on staff
📋 32 patent applications filed per day on average

This is a company with fortress finances running at startup speed.

17/ So what's the bigger picture?
In 2023, China overtook Japan to become the world's largest car exporter.
BYD is the tip of that spear. And unlike Tesla — which only does EVs — BYD also dominates plug-in hybrids, which are growing even faster (up 73% in 2024).
They're not betting on one future. They're covering all of them.

18/ The West is starting to notice.
EU: 17–35% tariffs on Chinese EVs US: 100% tariffs (BYD not yet selling cars there)
But BYD's response? Build factories inside the EU. Hungary first. Tariff walls don't stop a company that manufactures where you live.

19/ To recap what BYD has built:
✅ World's #1 EV manufacturer
✅ Own battery supply chain
✅ Own semiconductor chips
✅ Lithium mining operations
✅ 8-ship ocean freight fleet
✅ Factories on 5 continents
✅ 110,000 engineers
✅ $21B+ cash in the bank

Started making phone batteries in 1995.

20/ The question isn't whether BYD will be a major global automaker.

It already is.

The question is: what does the auto industry look like in 10 years when BYD has a factory in your country, ships to your port, and a car at every price point under your competitor's hood?

Watch this company. 👀

— END —

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