Uber driver Albertino Inácio Neto, who lives in the Northeast city of Recife, almost gave up his job. “I was losing money with a combustion car,” he said.It was costing him roughly $500 a month to fill his tank, so Inácio decided to spend $30,000 on a BYD Dolphin Plus last year.“The car is excellent. It’s working great,” he said.BYD cars are popping up more and more on the streets of Brazil, one of the largest auto markets in the world. As gas prices spiked with the Iran war, the Chinese EV carmaker sold more than 37,000 vehicles in the country in the first quarter of this year. That’s a 70% jump from the same period of last year.In four years, BYD has sold almost 250,000 electric and plug-in hybrid cars in Brazil, making the country the automaker’s biggest market outside of China.“BYD invested a lot in marketing and offers very competitive prices,” said Murilo Briganti, chief operating officer of Bright Consulting. BYD is one of their clients. “BYD produces the batteries, the software, and the vehicles; that reduces costs,” Briganti said.With a price tag of $24,000, BYD’s Dolphin Mini is now the top-selling car in Brazil. In 2025, BYD surpassed Tesla to become the world’s top EV seller. International expansion is key because BYD is facing stiff competition and lower profits in China.BYD’s Dolphin Mini, seen here at a BYD dealership in Recife, has a price tag of $24,000 and is now the top-selling car in Brazil.Gisele RegatãoPaulo Feldmann, a professor of economics and innovation at the University of São Paulo, said there’s a reason BYD cars are so cheap.“Chinese companies get support from the government,” he said. “Sometimes the support is huge, which is the case here.”Felmann said that the Chinese government is footing the bill. “In my opinion, this is a kind of dumping,” he said, referring to the practice of exporting goods at prices below production costs.Cheap labor is famously a factor in BYD’s prices, and in 2024, an investigation by Brazilian government agencies found that the company had brought almost 500 Chinese workers without proper paperwork to build one of its plants. More than 150 workers were rescued in what were described as slavery-like conditions. The company was added to the government’s so-called “dirty list” of companies with labor practices akin to slavery, but was removed from the list via a court injunction earlier this year.At the opening of BYD’s factory in Camaçari, Bahia in 2025, Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva celebrated that the company will produce 600,000 cars a year here. They will be sold in Brazil, and exported to other countries in the region.BYD is already the fifth most popular car brand in Brazil and wants to be number one by 2030. It won’t be easy. More Chinese car companies are coming to the country, and automakers are launching new models, like American GM, in partnership with South Korean Hyundai.—Support for this story was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.