BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu has laid down a marker: his company will be the world’s largest automaker within five years. For context, BYD sold roughly 4.3 million passenger vehicles in 2024. Toyota, the current title holder, moved about 10 million. That’s a gap, but not an insurmountable one for a company whose production has expanded eightfold since 2021.
This isn’t a new ambition for Wang. The goal traces back to at least 2010, when his initial roadmap called for BYD to become China’s top producer by 2015. That specific timeline slipped, but the company now generates over $110 billion in annual revenue and employs a workforce projected to reach approximately 970,000 by 2025.
The numbers behind the ambition
BYD already holds one crown. It surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest electric vehicle maker in 2024, selling around 1.8 million fully electric units. That figure doesn’t include its plug-in hybrids, which push total sales to that 4.3 million number.
Since 2022, BYD has produced zero gasoline-only internal combustion engine vehicles. Every car rolling off its assembly lines runs on some form of new energy technology, whether that’s a pure battery electric drivetrain or a plug-in hybrid system.
