According to Phoenix.com Technology, Bloomberg Industry Research's analysis report shows that at least in the next few years, the battle for the global electric car sales crown will revolve around two companies, namely Tesla and BYD, and Volkswagen's sales have been unable to compare with the first two.
Although Tesla's electric car sales were surpassed by BYD in the fourth quarter of 2023, its annual sales are still the first. The media believes that Tesla's top sales position can be maintained until at least 2030. By that time, Tesla's annual sales will reach 5.8 million units, compared to BYD's 4.2 million, Volkswagen's 4.1 million, Toyota's 3.5 million, and Stellantis' 2.3 million.
In addition, analysts such as Michael Dean of Bloomberg Industry Research specifically pointed out that although internal combustion engine models will continue to dominate the global car market in the future, Volkswagen has now lost the competitive power of electric cars.
Michael Dean pointed out that competition in the future tram market is likely to intensify the price war, which will squeeze tram profit margins. The EV market is likely to remain as fragmented as it is now, and Tesla is still the only truly global EV company until traditional automakers launch scalable, next-generation platforms.
Michael Dean stressed that the growth of electric car sales in the future is likely to weaken, as there is a lack of fast public charging stations in all car markets in the world except China, and the high price of electric cars is prohibitive for consumers.
Interestingly, in the face of sales surpassed by BYD, Tesla CEO Elon Musk's response is very interesting.
On January 3, Musk left a message on social media X saying that Tesla is not so much a car company, in fact, its positioning is closer to an artificial intelligence and robotics company.
However, the Motley Fool, an American investment research platform, contradicted Musk, saying that 84% of Tesla's revenue now comes from car sales.
Reuters said that from the perspective of the development of the global tram industry, the full competition between Tesla and BYD is actually a good thing, and it is not so important who ranks first at present, and tram manufacturing is still a growing industry, which can fully accommodate Tesla and BYD to continue to expand production capacity. In the tram industry, the most important thing is actually the technical field.
It is worth mentioning that Tesla's sales in the fourth quarter of 2023 will be 484507 units, while BYD's sales in the same period will be 526409 units, which is the first time that BYD has surpassed Tesla. For the whole year of 2023, BYD sold a total of 1,574,800 electric vehicles, a year-on-year increase of more than 70%. Tesla's annual sales were 1,808,600 units, achieving the target set at the beginning.
These two sets of data have aroused heated discussions among foreign netizens.
Some people believe that Tesla's operating income, net profit, and per capita revenue are currently better than BYD's, and Tesla is betting on high-tech technology. Although BYD's performance in the low-end market is very impressive, it has not yet proven its sales in Europe and North America.
Some people also believe that BYD's sales in some countries and regions have actually surpassed Tesla, and Israel is one of them. So, Tesla is now like the iPhone in the tram industry, and BYD is Android.
However, Musk said that Tesla is an artificial intelligence and robotics company, but in fact, this sentence is not that he wants to deliberately hide the embarrassment of being surpassed by BYD in sales, but that Musk is really betting on AI and robots.
According to an April 2023 assessment by ARK invest, founded by technology investor Cathy Wood, electric car sales may not be Tesla's main source of revenue in the near future, as Tesla's autonomous robo-taxi business will be a key driver, which is expected to contribute 67% of Tesla's enterprise value and 64% of expected EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) in 2027.
In addition, the American financial news website Benzinga also believes that Tesla and BYD are not comparable before, because Tesla is essentially a technology company, while BYD is an automaker. Although Tesla's current profits are mainly from the automotive industry, it is clear that Tesla will transform into a robotics company.