The News
Chinese automaker BYD unveiled a new range of electric vehicles that it said can charge in five minutes, ramping up its competition with Tesla in the burgeoning Chinese market.
BYD shares climbed more than 6% in early trading in Hong Kong on Tuesday, pushing the company’s market value up to almost $162 billion — more than Ford, General Motors, and Volkswagen combined.
BYD’s new batteries, which see cars run 250 miles on five minutes of charge, places it comfortably ahead of Tesla’s Superchargers, which allow vehicles to run for 170 miles on 15 minutes worth of charge, Bloomberg wrote.
The announcement comes as Tesla’s China shipments plunged 49% in February from a year earlier, while its sales in Germany — Europe’s largest EV market — fell 76% in the same month.
BYD is “elevating the game to another dimension,” an independent China auto analyst told the outlet, while an EV startup executive told Axios that Tesla had moved from “leader to laggard.”