Entering 2024, various car companies have presented their 2023 performance reports. BYD easily defeated Tesla with an advantage of over one million vehicles, becoming the global champion of new energy vehicle sales.
According to sales data, Tesla delivered a total of 1.8086 million vehicles throughout 2023, a year-on-year increase of 38%; BYD sold 3.0244 million vehicles throughout the year, a year-on-year increase of 61.9%.
BYD's achievement has attracted widespread attention, with X (former social media Twitter) users posting detailed comparisons of sales and other data between the two car companies. In response, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, "Tesla is an artificial intelligence/robotics company, although in the eyes of many people, it is a car company."
Musk responded on X to netizens comparing Tesla and BYD
It is interesting that after the sales data was released, many media outlets once again dug up video content from more than a decade ago where Musk mocked BYD, implying that Musk had been slapped in the face by reality.
In 2011, when asked about BYD in a Bloomberg interview, Musk chuckled and asked the host "Have you ever seen their car?" He said that BYD is not a competitor to Tesla because its cars are not attractive enough and its technology is not strong enough. He emphasized that BYD's development focus should be on ensuring survival.
However, in May last year, Musk had already changed his tune. He stated on X that this interview "happened many years ago," and BYD now has strong competitiveness. In the future, China may be the main source of the world's top ten car companies.
In fact, as early as 2022, BYD had already regained the global sales champion of new energy vehicles from Tesla.
In 2022, BYD's cumulative annual sales reached 1.869 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 152.5%; Tesla's cumulative annual sales reached 1.31 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 40%.
From 2015 to 2018, BYD has been the global champion of new energy vehicle sales. In 2019, with the start of Tesla's Shanghai super factory and the delivery of the Model 3 in the Chinese market, Tesla defeated BYD for the first time and topped the sales chart for three consecutive years.
For many years, BYD and Tesla have been in a "catch up" situation. In 2023, BYD surpassed Tesla and received unprecedented attention, largely due to the huge gap between the two, with up to 1.2 million vehicles.
It is worth noting that many analysts and institutions still choose to compare the two from the perspective of pure electric vehicles. In the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD also surpassed Tesla to become the world's largest pure electric vehicle manufacturer.
BYD sold a total of 1.5748 million pure electric vehicle models in 2023, which is about 230000 fewer than Tesla; However, in the fourth quarter, BYD's sales of pure electric vehicles were 526400 units, while Tesla's delivery volume in the fourth quarter was 484500 units.