Unlike Elon Musk with his list of broken promisesthe statistics don’t lie. Tesla has lost the title of the world’s largest manufacturer of EV to the Chinese car manufacturer BYD. The signs have been there for a while, with BYD outselling Tesla in Europe a certain number of times sometime in 2025. It is now official on a global scale.
Although it is blocked enter the American marketBYD’s seemingly unstoppable rise continues as its electric vehicle sales increased last year by 28% to 2.25 million. In contrast, Tesla announced today that it has delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025— its second consecutive annual decline and a 16% year-over-year decline for the fourth quarter. It’s not just the Chinese brand that is ahead of Tesla in the electric vehicle race; this is a marked change.
Last week, BYD said that by 2025 it had sold 4.6 million “new energy vehicles” (which includes both full electric vehicles and electric vehicles). plug-in hybrids) worldwide, of which more than a million are exported cars. Its exports of passenger vehicles increased by more than 145 percent year-on-year.
The news comes after a frankly disastrous year for Tesla, which saw the hot-selling Model Y, crucial to both Elon Musk and his automaker, receive a half-hearted endorsement. refresh this bombedwithout managing to reverse the sales problems. It is also a year that has revealed barely how few people bought THE very reprimanded Cybertruck; in March, yet another reminder revealed that the company had apparently sold fewer than 50,000 electric vans since it began deliveries to customers 14 months ago. Musk had told investors that Tesla would sell 250,000 Cybertrucks per year.
With Tesla sales in the United States and in free fall in EuropeMusk turned to the United States President Donald Trump for help. Trump obliged by transforming the South Lawn of the White House into a makeshift venue Tesla showroom, saying he would buy a racy vehicle himself Model S Checkered. But in June, it was reported that Trump could be sell the car after publicly falling out with Musk.
Last month, electric vehicle news site Electrek reported that Musk EspaceX had bought Cybertrucks worth tens of millions of dollars that Tesla supposedly cannot sell. (You can see the mics all lined up at SpaceX in this video.) If true, the move would significantly strengthen Tesla’s financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2025, providing at least some respite for the automaker from the crisis. The United States has ended its electric vehicle tax credits at the end of the third trimester.
Musk recently claimed that moving away from electric vehicles would secure the company’s future, as well as a A $1 trillion wage package for him. Tesla is banking on robotaxis and the production of legions of Optimus robots to catch up. The problem is that, despite Musk’s promise to deliver 1 million humanoid robots over the next decade, (comedy) sequences We are still seeing the emergence of remote-controlled machines.
And as for Tesla’s prowess in self-driving technology, the company’s Robotaxi has seen a limited and rocky launch in Austin in June and remains far behind Waymo in the emerging market. Behind the bold promises and projections, there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done to secure the brand’s next incarnation.
It won’t be easy for BYD either. Despite the positive sales figures for 2025, these actually show the weakest growth in five years for the company, partly due to increasingly fierce domestic competition.
BYD, however, is doubling down on expansion, alongside convincing public relations stunts. The Shenzhen-based company’s rapid expansion, including in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Europe, comes despite many countries imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The establishment in the United Kingdom has also been a success for the company, with the country now its largest market outside of China and sales there increased by 880 percent, albeit from a low level.
Perhaps BYD’s biggest statement of intent came in September. At the Papenburg test track in Germany, the company managed to push its limited-production 3,000-horsepower electric hypercar, the Yangwang U9 Xtreme, to a record top speed of 308.4 mph, making it the the fastest production car in the world in the electric or gas categories.
With several new electric vehicle launches in various categories and price points guaranteed by BYD in 2026, Tesla’s new offerings will supposedly be limited to Cybercab and a new semi-trailer – if they actually arrive on time. No wonder Tesla looks less and less like a car company these days.