If you’re like me, you’re certainly aware of BYD, the rapidly-growing powerhouse Chinese OEM that is a global leader in both BEVs and PHEVs. And you’re probably aware that Warren Buffett invested about a quarter of a billion dollars in it in 2008, since which date the share price has expanded roughly 20-fold (nice one, Warren!). But did you know just how big this company is? According to ace climate and energy researcher Nat Bullard, BYD is now the largest private employer in China. He provides alongside that assertion this map of BYD production facilities in China (factories listed as text, owned facility locations in brown, JVs in pink)1:
A quick online search reveals that the company has some 900,000 employees, so the claim seems at least reasonable. And it would need a lot of factories and a lot of employees to churn out its extensive product line, marketed under 4 main brand names:
(Thanks to Alliance Bernstein SG for the product chart.)
One final comment: I have no idea if this was deliberate or not on BYD’s part, but dispersing one’s factories across multiple provinces makes good political sense, in that it mutes the downsides of any inter-provincial rivalries in China. (Rather like, in a similar way, Asian and European transplant factories in the USA are distributed across many states, thus generating maximum political support in the US Senate.)
BYD, which is aiming to produce 4,000,000 vehicles in 2024, is… big2.
UPDATE: From Taylor Ogan, on some platform called Y? Fred’s? Skyblue?:
Neither Nat nor the Chinese analyst from whom he pulled this chart cite the underlying source for the assertion or the map.
These are the kind of nuanced insights you all come to Car Charts for! But, did you also know that the name is a “backronym” (not a term you hear every day)?