No. of Recommendations: 4
"" Try convincing anyone that there’s an EV maker not named Tesla worth owning, and you’ll likely be met with blank stares. While Tesla has more than doubled this year, Lucid Group
, and Polestar Automotive Holding were pummeled, while Ford Motor and General Motors, though up on the year, have lagged behind the S&P 500 index
SPX
by more than 15 percentage points. BYD has lagged behind as well, rising about 5% even as Tesla stock gained 107%.
BYD, though, isn’t a fly-by-night EV maker. For one, it sells a lot of electric cars—more than Tesla, when you include its plug-in hybrids. It also makes money—about as much as Tesla. Its stock, though, hasn’t performed nearly as well as Elon Musk’s EV maker. In fact, it has barely budged even as BYD’s earnings have surged, showing that concerns about the future of EVs have overwhelmed fundamentals.
Of course, BYD isn’t Tesla. While Tesla makes just battery electric vehicles, or BEVs, BYD produces both plug-in hybrid models and BEVs. BYD’s strategy is also different. Its cars are cheaper—the average car sold by BYD was approximately $27,000 in the third quarter, compared with $45,000 for Tesla—and, unlike Tesla and its global footprint, BYD is focused on China, at least for now. ""