The electric vehicles (EV) industry is being refined and reshaped by China’s BYD, causing Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, to worry about the demise of his automotive brand. China’s electric vehicle pioneer BYD has introduced a system where its EV vehicles can be refilled in just five minutes. Watch this: Tesla’s EV gets refuled in 15 minutes. It gets better; the new BYD refuel system can go up to 250 miles while Tesla’s goes up to 200.
At this point, if I were Musk, I would just put my hands on my head because China is bringing it on. China’s BYD’s invention is called Super E-Platform and it has managed to close the barrier that EVs have been facing for years now. Additionally, the new charging system has a 1,000 kW maximum power output. Just to add the icing on the cake, BYD plans to build and install 4000 refuelling stations for this new development across the country of China.
Wang Chuanfu, the chairman of BYD, stated during the inaugural event and said:
“Our goal is to make EV charging as fast as refuelling a gasoline car.”
At this point, it is not a surprise that China will always level up in its development, whether it is in the automotive sector or the energy sector; they always find a way to beat their rivals and stand out in the market. Even Tesla is starting to partner with some of China’s top companies just to push their market share. After announcing their new development of the five-minute refuelling system, their market share went up by more than 6%, according to CNN.
Tesla is shaking in its boots and the global market is in awe
Tesla, including the rest of the world, is in awe. To some extent, no one saw this one coming. It looks like many automakers were trying to find ways to reduce the refilling time with EVs, but BYD got to the finish line and now all eyes are on them and it has boosted them on a larger scale. Tesla’s supercharging system now appears to be slower. Think about it, fifteen minutes and five minutes—that difference is huge, especially in this industry.
In its shaking, Tesla released their free trials for its long-awaited Full Self-Driving (FSD) in China. Because of the poor progress, it forced the American brand to collaborate with Chinese tech giant Baidu, to expand their market share and performance, as I mentioned before. It is now clear to the global market that Tesla is not doing very well and China is taking every chance it gets to win the hearts of its old, current and new customers to boost their market.
BYD keeps dominating in China
Now that Tesla has released its Full Self-Driving (FSD), guess what? BYD released the same thing; however, according to CNN, it didn’t charge extra for its models. Its free upgrading of the exclusive “God’s Eye” technology, according to analysts, put more pressure on Chinese EV manufacturers like Tesla. On the other hand, US consumers can purchase Tesla’s FSD for a one-time payment of $8,000 or a monthly subscription fee of $99, respectively.
Elon Musk and Tesla have been placed in a corner where witnessing the rise of BYD and crushing them forces them to go back and restrategize on how to make a huge comeback because, at this point, China is advancing technologically. If Tesla fails to push harder, it could come to a demise by losing all its market in the Asian country, which is something that will affect all the other parts of Elon Musk’s businesses.