BBC News Top Stories-Business Chinas BYD closer to taking Teslas electric car top spot
January 2, 2024 2 min 312 words
这则报道显示，中国电动汽车制造商比亚迪正逐渐接近超越特斯拉，成为全球最畅销的电动车制造商。在2023年第四季度，比亚迪售出创纪录的52.6万辆纯电动汽车，全年总销量超过300万辆。这一消息引发了业界关于特斯拉在电动车市场领导地位的质疑。比亚迪之成功可追溯至其主营业务——电池制造，这使得公司能够在电动汽车领域更具竞争力。特斯拉则面临着高昂的借贷成本对销售需求造成压力的问题。此竞争势头变化反映出全球电动车市场激烈角逐的趋势，中国制造商正逐渐成为主导力量。比亚迪的成功突显了在电动汽车行业，以自主生产电池为核心的战略可能取得巨大成功。
Chinese company BYD has moved a step closer to toppling Elon Musk's Tesla as the world's biggest-selling manufacturer of electric vehicles.
The firm said on Monday it had sold a record 526,000 battery-only vehicles in the last three months of 2023.
That was helped by a more than 70% surge in sales in December.
US-based Tesla is scheduled to release its latest quarterly vehicle production and delivery figures before Wall Street opens on Tuesday.
For the year as a whole, Shenzen-based BYD said it had sold more than 3 million so-called-new energy vehicles (NEVs), which includes battery-only vehicles and hybrids.
Almost 1.6 million of its total sales were battery-only vehicles, the firm said.
Industry analysts have forecast that Tesla sold around 483,000 electric vehicles in the last three months of 2023 and 1.82 million for the year as a whole.
Last January, Mr Musk said that Tesla had the potential to achieve 2 million deliveries in 2023 but had since warned that higher borrowing costs were putting pressure on demand for his company's cars.
BYD's chief executive Wang Chuanfu co-founded BYD with his cousin in Shenzhen in 1995.
The company made a name for itself as a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries - used in smartphones, laptops and other electronics - that competed with pricier Japanese imports.
It started selling its shares on the stock market in 2002 and diversified by purchasing a struggling state-owned car manufacturer, Qinchuan Automobile Company.
Since 2008 BYD has counted veteran US investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway as a shareholder.
Analysts say BYD owes its growth to its original business - batteries. They are among the most expensive parts of an EV and making them in-house saves BYD a lot of money.
Many of BYD's competitors rely on third-party manufacturers for batteries.