'Brutal knockout stage' for electric cars approaching according to BYD boss as price war led by cheap EVs such as 2026 BYD Atto 1 hits home

BYD Chairman and Executive Director Wang Chuan-fu has said competition in the New Energy Vehicle (NEV) industry “has reached a fever pitch” and is entering a “brutal knockout stage”.

Speaking at the company’s 2025 Annual Results Announcement in Shenzhen, China, Mr Wang said, “In 2025, as the global landscape evolved at an accelerated pace, the century-long transformation of the global automotive industry entered a critical phase."

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The Chinese giant is widely perceived as the instigator of an intense price war in the domestic new car market, designed to apply pressure to newer, more vulnerable players.

It’s worth noting XPeng Founder and Chairman He Xiaopeng is on the record with a prediction that the squeeze play to eliminate smaller EV makers “could last up to five years and leave just five survivors” from the 100-plus brands currently active in China.

But BYD’s aggressive strategy has impacted its own results with year-on-year sales down 7.8 per cent to 3.55 million vehicles.

As a consequence, net profit also fell ¥33 billion (~$6.8 billion) in the financial year to December 31, 2025 and the company’s net profit margin shrank to 4.1 per cent compared to 5.2 per cent in 2024.

And a clue to the risky nature of the brand’s brutal discounting tactics is that fall in profit arriving in parallel with a 3.5 per cent increase in revenue to ¥804 billion (~$166 billion).

For reference, China’s total automobile production and sales in 2025 reached a staggering 34.53 million and 34.40 million units, representing year-on-year increases of 10.4 per cent and 9.4 per cent, respectively.

NEV production and sales hit 16.626 million and 16.49 million units, surging 29 per cent and 28.2 per cent year-on-year.

With high tariffs effectively putting the US market off limits for now, Mr Wang noted the company’s growing export presence elsewhere with BYD now represented in 119 countries across Latin America, The Middle East, UK, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

He also pointed to completion of a US$5.6 billion (~A$7.9 billion) round of revenue raising “attracting participation from top-tier global long-term investors, sovereign wealth funds and strategic investors from the Middle East.”

And in terms of product research and development across BYD and its Fangchengbao, Denza and Yangwang sub-brands, Mr Wang referenced the Group’s ‘Technology Dream Team’ comprising over 120,000 engineers with recent innovations including the ‘Super e-Platform’, claimed to be “the world’s first mass-produced, full-domain 1000V high-voltage architecture for passenger vehicles”.

He also highlighted 'DiSus’, the Group’s proprietary intelligent body control system for NEVs and the second-generation ‘Blade’ battery including ‘Flash Charging Technology’ taking five minutes to charge from 10-70 per cent, nine minutes from 10-97 per cent at normal temperature and 12 minutes to charge from 20-97 per cent at -30 degrees C. 

The latter is claimed to set a new global record for the fastest charging speed in mass-produced EVs, in the process “overcoming the global challenges of ‘slow charging’ and ‘difficult low-temperature charging’ that have characterised the first half of the electrification race.”