Why this Chinese EV terrifies Europe’s carmakers

This is a story about changes that are too big to ignore.For many years the global car market has been dominated by the same small group countries like Japan Germany and the United States.But no longer in the span of five years China leapfrogged the largest automakers in the world going from sixth place to first.It now exports more vehicles than the United States and Japan combined.And no company tells that story better than electric carmaker B .Y .

D.Bloomberg's Tom McKenzie reports from Paris.

At an opera house just north of the Champs Elysees, a lavish debut, even for Paris.The star of the show, not a performer, but a product.This car is the latest creation of B .Y .D., a Shenzhen -based electric vehicle maker that's taking the world by storm.

Today, it's China's biggest car company by sales.

I want to be the best valuable brand in the auto industry.

But it wasn't so long ago that other automakers literally laughed them off.This was Tesla's Elon Musk here on Bloomberg back in 2011.

There's competitors now ramping up.And as you're familiar with BYD, which is also on the West Coast, I think they're ramping up production of their electric vehicles.Warren Buffett owns 10 percent stake in that.

Why do you laugh?

BYD is trying to compete.

Why do you laugh?

Have you seen their car?

You don't see them at all as a competitor?No.Since then, a lot has changed.BYD now has almost a million employees.It says it files an average of 52 patents per working day.And in 2025, for the first time, BYD beat Tesla in total car sales, claiming the title of top electric vehicle maker in the world.

How would you characterize BYD's growth in recent years?Yeah, explosive.Ryan Fisher is the electric vehicle and charging analyst at Bloomberg NEF.

gone from barely on the map, if you know what I mean, if you look at the chart, to having 4 million plus sales and being in the top 10 automakers in the world.

You come from the industry, Ryan.How is BYD viewed within the industry?

Similar to Musk's comment, like, who are these?I think now people are changing it to, oh yeah, we're kind of scared.

For a better idea of just how seriously BYD and the Chinese auto sector broadly are being taken now, just listen to Ford CEO Jim Farley speaking last year.

It's the most humbling thing I've ever seen.Their cost, their quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West.

We wanted to get a first -hand look at the battle for the future of automaking, so we went to Paris to see the rollout of BYD's new car.There, we spoke with the woman on the front lines of the firm's global expansion.Why Paris?

Yeah, very good question.Paris is a city full of energy and also art.

Stella Li has led BYD's charge into markets beyond China, including here in France.As the company's number two, after its founder, Li also helped engineer its transformation from a battery startup into an auto manufacturing powerhouse.

office in Hong Kong in 1997, and then came to Europe in 1999 with US $30 ,000 cash and a 140 -feet container battery.The message is, you need to survive.to sell the battery.

And sell the battery she did, securing deals with Motorola and Nokia, back then leaders in the mobile phone space.An IPO followed, then a major investment from Berkshire Hathaway.With each step, the company grew and doubled down on research and development and bringing suppliers under their own roof.What do you think?The biggest structural advantage is that BYD has over its competitors.

Two things.One is the technology.Till today, we have 120 ,000 R &D engineers.We invent 52 patterns per day.The second is BYD has very strong vertical integration capability.What does this mean?

It means we can do innovation much faster.We can do cool stuff much more than any other people.That's the reason you saw BYD in the past two years.We have the sporty car called the Yanwan U9.We have 3 ,000 horsepower.It's the fastest car on the planet.

It's capable of well over 300 miles an hour.This feels like China turning up and just saying, yeah, we'll have all the records.Thank you.

Sadly, BYD didn't let us race their hypercar to the Arc de Triomphe, but we did drive their latest luxury EV, the Denzer Z9 GT.

Who do you see as your main competitor?

Who is the brand that you're really competing with in this premium segment now with the Denzer Z9?

All the cool technology in this car, I did not see any competition here.

Given the company's origins, it's no surprise that the car maker's key feature might be its battery.The range is long and the charge is fast, far faster than anything else on the market, if done through their planned system of flash chargers.Fisher says it remains to be seen how quickly BYD can roll the market.out and whether their new cars will beat the competition in the field, but there's little doubt that their tech is impressive.

When you think about their advantage in batteries that they've managed to produce, it does seem kind of like incredible.They've come out with the golden egg.They've done it incredibly quickly with the best technology at the best price.

What's more, the new car has the profile of a Porsche and the horsepower of a Bugatti, all at the price of a Subaru Outback, but only in China.Here in France, it runs about 115 ,000 euros or $135 ,000.

So with this one, it can be true.to 100 kilometers, 2 .7 seconds.

2 .7.Not all of BYD's vehicles target the luxury space.The lowest cost model in the UK, where Chinese cars now account for one in every 10 new vehicles sold, goes for under 19 ,000 pounds, or about 25 ,000 US dollars.Cheap, but not the cheapest.Nor is that the goal, according to BYD's special advisor, Alfredo Altavia.What do you say to regulators and consumers?

How do you convince them that BYD isn't just a low -cost disruptor?

BYD has never been and will never be a low -cost player in any segment.Our main standing argument is value for money.

Aldavia came to BYD after a career as an executive with the competition.As the former head of Fiat Chrysler's European operations, he was a close aide to former CEO Sergio Marchionne.and was considered a top contender to take over his role.segment or something else?

I won't answer with our volume target because you will not believe me.But certainly we want to be one of the key players in this industry on a global scale.

If you were an auto executive at a European legacy carmaker right now, as you were once, how worried would you be?Quite worried.About a million units sold last year overseas or international sales.One and a half million is the number I've seen for for 2026.

Yes.

Are you on track to meet that to beat that.

Yeah.Easily.

Easily.

Easily beating one and a half million.Yes.This year.Yeah.

In recent weeks, the war in Iran and the soaring fuel prices that have come along with it have added new momentum to electric vehicle demand.China's exports of EVs and hybrids soared to a record high in March, with BYD leading the way.But for all the optimism about international growth, the company has faced major challenges in its largest market, back home in China.

I want to talk about the here and now in the Chinese market.

How would you characterize the current state of the Chinese auto market?Chinese auto market is super competitive.BYD recently posting a roughly 20 % drop in year -on -year profit, the first time since 2021.Is that as bad as it gets, do you think?

No, it's nothing.Because first, you need to understand the scenario behind where price war and competing with an EV car.Because everything we do, The next day our company will copy.But then for BID now we bring another protection waiver is our flash charging technology.The second generation play the cell.So this we call the protection waiver.

I think it will keep our competition several years behind us.

Are you seeing signs ofrecovery in the Chinese market.

Yes.And the second the market in China in Q4 Q1 is not good because all the subsidy.Even if we have a small portion left, it's 100 percent gone.

Recent moves to wind down government support are a headwind for China's EV makers.But Fisher says subsidies haven't been the only driver of their rise, especially in BYD's case.How much of BYD's success is down to Chinese government support over the years?

There was the investigation from the European Union about which specific automakers were getting the most subsidies and therefore what tariffs they should achieve.BYD was actually on the lower end of the spectrum than some of those.I think what the Chinese government have done and what some people look as maybe I would be jealous of it is that they aligned everything they were doing.They had an automotive plan.They got involved with the metals and mining.They provided the subsidies.

Some of this was about oil independence and some of this was about winning the automotive industry, right?This is a massive part of GDP in many countries, and they've done that successfully.So I don't look at the Chinese and feel like they've done anything massively wrong.I actually feel like we've been a bit naive as policymakers in Europe and places like that.

Some critics may look at BYD's success and the success of other Chinese automakers in Europe and in other markets outside of China and say this is a classic example of China shifting excess capacity.to other markets.Would that be a fair criticism?

I think it's a fair criticism.We see it across industries.China obviously has leverage, and you've seen that in the negotiations, where they've tariffed different countries.Maybe the French keep them out of their subsidies, and then they get hit with tariffs back on brandy or something like that.Fundamentally, consumers want the cheapest products and the best ones, and the Chinese have managed to achieve that.

So far, American consumers haven't gotten their hands on China's latest EVs.Biden -era tariffs of over 100 per cent have kept BYD and others out of the US car market.But Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping are set to meet in May, and those trade barriers are likely high on the agenda.US carmakers might not have long before Chinese cars show up on American shores, something that Ford's Jim Farley was well aware of when he spoke to Wall Street Week.

I've never seen a competition like this.The government bet on EVs before anyone else in the world.They're the largest market in the world, and now they're the most important market in the world.We can compete and win against them, but we have to bring our A game, and we have to learn a lot of new things.

In 2027, Ford is set to debut a line of EVs starting at around $30 ,000, which Farley describes as a response to BYD.But he's also talked to the Trump administration about forming joint ventures with Chinese firms to build cars locally.Volkswagen and Stellantis have already made similar deals.And as each carmaker and country decides how to respond to China's rise, they must grapple with the costs and benefits of protectionism or an alternative.If you can't beat them, join them.