China's emergence as an EV powerhouse has been a long time coming

Though primarily still known for its school buses here in the US, BYD has become China’s largest automaker with a one trillion yuan market capitalization (~$149 billion) — that’s bigger than Ford and GM’s market caps ($66.01B and $56.63B, respectively) put together. And while Americans were gearing up for Fourth of July festivities, BYD was quietly supplanting Tesla as the world’s most prolific EV automaker with the Shenzhen-based, Berkshire Hathaway-backed car company reportedly outselling Tesla in the first half of 2022 by 641,000 cars to 564,000.