BYD pushed out nearly a million vehicles in the first three months of 2025, locking in a 58% surge in sales compared to the same period last year. The company delivered 986,098 passenger vehicles in Q1, including 371,419 in March alone.
That total included 416,388 fully electric cars. The rest were plug-in hybrids. Since 2022, BYD hasn’t built a single gas car. It only makes EVs and hybrids now.
The numbers blow past Tesla’s. Elon Musk’s company, which only makes EVs, is expected to report sales between 340,000 and 377,000 units for Q1.
That’s over half a million fewer cars than BYD pushed out in the same period, according to a Tuesday release from Bloomberg. Elon’s public behavior has also been a factor. His political stunts have pushed US and European buyers away, while in China, Tesla’s been buried under pressure from local automakers—BYD leading that charge.
BYD delivers free smart driving, faster charging, and record revenue
In March, BYD unveiled free smart driving features for most of its models and showed off a charger that adds 400 kilometers of range in just five minutes.
These releases came straight from the desk of company founder and chairman Wang Chuanfu, whose team has gone full throttle on product launches. The Shenzhen-based company also hit another milestone last week—over $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time ever. That means BYD has officially overtaken Tesla in total yearly income.
Sales for March included 166,109 battery EVs and 205,310 plug-in hybrids. These numbers aren’t just local wins. BYD wants to move 5.5 million vehicles this year.
That includes a planned 800,000 for export, even with EU and US tariffs pushing back on Chinese-made cars. The company doesn’t sell its passenger models in the US yet. It’s blocked by high import duties and a ban on smart driving EVs in the States. Still, that hasn’t stopped it from aiming global.
So far in 2025, BYD’s shares have gained about 45%, fueled by all this growth. Tesla’s stock has done the exact opposite—falling 36% in the same period. That massive drop also crushed Elon Musk’s net worth by billions.
Tesla takes hit as Wells Fargo predicts bigger losses ahead
Wells Fargo doesn’t expect the pain to stop for Tesla. The bank called Tesla an “underweight tactical idea” going into Q2 and slapped a $130 price target on the stock. That price would cut its value by about half from where it closed on Monday. Tesla just had its worst quarter since the end of 2022. That’s when shares dropped over 50%. In Q1 this year, they dropped another 36%.
Analyst Colin Langan from Wells Fargo wrote in a note that Tesla’s issues are far from over. “A continuation of deteriorating fundamentals in the core autos business remains undeniable, while the company remains heavily overvalued vs. the Mag 7 on 2025E PE,” Colin wrote.
He also said that the Cybercab Elon promised for June looks like fantasy. Testing isn’t even happening without supervision yet. That rollout, he said, doesn’t seem real.
Sales numbers across the board are weakening. Colin noted that deliveries in Europe are down 40% and in China down 14% so far this year. He said the expected summer launch of Tesla’s low-cost EV model won’t help either.
The company hasn’t given real specs, and he warned that dropping a cheaper car now could hurt Tesla’s other models. “We see high cannibalization risk with Model 3/Y which is likely dilutive to TSLA margins,” Colin said.
Tesla’s biggest markets—Europe, China, and the US—are all feeling the slowdown. And competition from brands like BYD keeps stacking up. Tesla’s market position is being eaten from both ends: demand’s falling, and rivals are undercutting them with faster, cheaper tech.
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