“They literally do everything except the rubber on the tires. This is not the case for Tesla. This is not the case for Toyota. The entire auto industry has globalized and now relies on a heavy supply chain, which we've seen can cause some issues. So BYD's real strength is its vertical integration and its logistics.”
Electrek · Climate & Energy · October 2026
Context
Covering BYD's earnings, Lambert notes BYD turns out far fewer cars per employee than Tesla, and explains that the comparison misleads because BYD makes almost everything in-house.
Transcript
…I could see even a deal with Rivian. Maybe they do some kind of, maybe that's how Rivian gets to China eventually. Could you see that? Europe too. And Europe as well. Europe is for sure coming when the R3 launches, in my opinion. But, you know, from my understanding, Rivian has global ambitions.
…some of what they've built, it's a little bit sad because you don't see a lot of competitive products coming from Volkswagen. Volkswagens used to be like, you know, like aspirational vehicles. And now they're kind of like, you know, that kind of looks like, you know, every other car. So. Yeah,
they carved themselves a nice pace. And like, it's premium. Like it's not luxury. It's premium. It's mass market still. It's, yeah, they had a great spot and they can't let it go. But you're absolutely right. I think, I think the but it's not like that China wasn't like everyone knew the playbook. Everyone knew that this is what was going to happen. It's just that the temptation of such a huge market with one of the rare growing middle class out there that could buy vehicles, it's like the allure was too good. And now the same thing with the US. Now the US is trying to do the other way around, especially with the tax pre-Trump with the tax credit on edge vehicle assembled in North America. That was like the other way around. Like now come bring your knowledge here if you want to have access to the market. Of course, and it was working for a minute until the orange men threw a stick into the whole program. But still, you see the history repeating itself all over again. I wouldn't be surprised if now the US all done for so long that they convinced the Chinese to deploy manufacturing capabilities in…
Yeah, I mean, the U.S. has convinced the Koreans, the Japanese, the Germans, like to build factories in the U.S. So why not the Chinese?
Very possible. All right, speaking of the Chinese, BYD also had their earnings. And we've been tracking them for a little bit. They were having some issues like any other Chinese automaker right now because the market in China is slowing down quite a bit. And not EV adoption. So the market, the…
I've never seen one in the wild.
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