BYD Group

BYD didn't start with cars, but with batteries — literally. 1994, just another battery maker among dozens in China. Today it's a diversified industrial conglomerate for which cars are just one line of business alongside rail transport, renewable energy, and electronics. More than 30 industrial parks across China, the US, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Hungary, and India are built around one idea: close the energy loop from generation and storage to end use, inside a single company.

That idea is distilled into a slogan — "Cool the Earth by 1 Degree" — an ambition that for most companies would stay a tagline, but for BYD became a zero-emissions strategy.

The results show up in the numbers: BYD electric vehicles sell on all six continents, in over 100 countries and more than 400 cities. The company sits on the Fortune Global 500, trades on the Hong Kong and Shenzhen exchanges, and confidently calls itself a world leader in green technology — and that's not an empty claim.

The automotive arm, BYD Auto, was founded in 2003 with one job: speed up the world's shift to clean transport. Two decades of relentless R&D later, the company has shipped the Blade Battery, the DM-i and DM-p hybrid platforms, the e-Platform 3.0 architecture, Cell-to-Body (CTB) integration, the iTAC motion-control system, DiSus active suspension, the XUANJI intelligent architecture, and the Super e-Platform — and became the first automaker in the world to fully drop internal-combustion cars. It's held the top spot in China's EV sales for 12 years running.

Today BYD Auto isn't one brand but four — BYD, Denza, Yangwang, and Fangchengbao — each with its own audience and its own idea of what an electric car should be.