This is pro linebacker TJ Watt and I'm back with YPB by Abercrombie for another activewear drop. My second co design collection has new shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in season workouts and their new Restore collection is a game changer off the field too, because even pro athletes like me need rest days. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores because your personal best is greater than anything. In October of 2011, Elon Musk sat down for a Bloomberg interview and was asked about a Chinese company called byd. He burst out laughing. He said, have you seen their car? I do not think they have a great product. I do not think it is particularly attractive. The technology is not very strong. But he did not see BYD as a competitor. He thought they might not survive. But 14 years later, BYD just dethroned Tesla and Elon Musk as the world's largest electronic vehicle maker. BYD sold 2.26 million all EVs in 2025, Tesla delivered 1.64 million. That's a gap of roughly 600,000 cars. It's not even close. For the first time since the early days of the Nissan Leaf, someone other than Tesla leads the global EV market on a calendar year. Bas, the company Musk laughed at is now running laps around him. And how did it happen? Going to walk through the numbers, the product failures, the political backlash, the end of the tax credit and what this means for the future of both companies. But first, I have one quick thing to take care of. Tesla released its Q4 2025 delivery report on Friday. The company delivered 418,227 vehicles in the fourth quarter, down 15.6% for the same period last year. And for the full year, Tesla delivered 1.64 million vehicles, down 8.6% from 2024. This is the second consecutive year of declining deliveries. In 2023, Tesla peaked at 1.81 million vehicles delivered in 2024. Deliveries slipped about 1% to 1.79 million. Now the decline is accelerating, an 8.6% drop in a year when the global EV market grew approximately 20. A company losing ground Tesla needed to deliver 571,000 vehicles in quarter four to avoid a full year decline. It cl it came up more than 150,000 short, and the fourth quarter was always going to be difficult. The $7,500 USD federal EV tax credit expired at the end of September, and Tesla saw a record Q3 as buyers rushed to lock in the incentive before it disappeared. And Tesla delivered nearly 497,000 vehicles in Q3 that pulled forward demand that would otherwise have landed in Q4. When the credit vanished, so did the urgency. But the tax credit is not the whole story. Tesla has been struggling all year. In Q1, deliveries fell 13% year over year. In Q2 they fell again and the pattern held even as the global EV market continued to grow. Tesla was shrinking inside an expanding market and introduced standard versions of the Model 3 and the Model Y in October. Priced about $5,000 below previous base models, it offered 0% financing on the Model Y, 0 down leases on inventory vehicles and some of the most aggressive incentives in company history. None of it reversed the trend. If demand was there, Tesla would not be offering 0% financing on a vehicle that just launched. Inventory piled up. Days of supply climbed to 149 days by November. 42 increase year over year. Vehicles built to meet pre credit expiration demand now sit unsold on lots across the country, including the Cyber Truck. Now I've been digging through our analytics of the show and noticed that 37 of you are following the channel. For you, I'm forever grateful. And the other 63% haven't hit the follower subscribe button. I've been an independent journalist covering Elon Musk, SpaceX, spaceflight and tech for the last six years and I'll continue to do that for the next 10 years. And all I ask from you is one second of your time and all you have to do is hit the follow or subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening or watching on right now. I'm extremely grateful that you're here and I'm really happy that you're in this community. So thank you. Now, Europe has been brutal for Tesla. Data from the European Automobile Manufacturers association shows that Tesla registrations fell 39% in the first 11 months of 2025. In the same period, BYD registrations rose 240%. In May 2025, BYD registered more battery electric vehicles in Europe than Tesla for the first time with 7231 compared to Tesla's 7165. That is happening despite EU tariffs on Chinese EVs. The European Commission concluded that Chinese EV manufacturers benefit from state subsidies and impose an additional 17 tariff on BYD on top of the standard 10 import duty. BYD is winning even with a 27 price disadvantage. It is building factories in Turkey, Hungary and potentially Spain to get around the tariffs. Meanwhile, Tesla's European sales are collapsing. China is no better. Tesla's market share has declined significantly. Chinese EV makers priced their products lower and buyers responded. BYD's domestic competitors are also growing Geely. Sales surged 90% in the first 11 months. 2025. Xiaomi entered the EV market 2024 and is already a very serious player. BYD's own domestic market share fell from 35% to in 2023 to 29% in 2025 as competition intensified. But BYD offset those losses with international expansion. Its overseas sales surpassed 1 million units for the first time, up 150% from 2024. The company is doing what Tesla used to do. It is flooding every segment with affordable, technologically competitive vehicles. And Tesla's lineup has barely changed in years. The Model 3 launched in 2017. The Model Y launched in 2020. The Cybertruck has been recalled eight times since deliveries began and is selling at less than 10% of production capacity. Tesla has no affordable entry level vehicles. The $25,000 car Musk promised on Battery Day 2020 was completely scrapped and canceled. Instead of new products, Tesla pivoted to strip down versions of existing models. That's not the same thing. BYD offers vehicles ranging from the tiny Seagull City car to luxury sedans. It launched new brands like Yang, Wang and Denzel to cover premium segments. It developed a 5 minute fast charging platform and is deploying it across Europe. Tesla hasn't done any of this. BYD makes its own batteries, its own chips and controls its entire supply chain vertically. When Musk left them in 2011, they were making phone batteries. Now they're making everything Tesla is not. There's also the Musk problem. After spending heavily to support Donald Trump's return to the White House, Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency for the first five months of 2025. He endorsed Germany's far right AfD party. He supported Britain anti immigration activist Tommy Robinson. He called for abolishing the European Union. And in response, protesters showed up at Tesla showrooms in Europe and United States. Some vandalized Tesla vehicles caught the showrooms on fires. Some vandalized charging stations. The company became a political symbol. You're not in a good way. Long time Tesla fans turns against the brand. The backlash is difficult to quantify, but analysts at multiple firms have cited it as a contributing factor in the sales decline. Musk stepped back from doge in May, saying he needed to refocus on Tesla and SpaceX. But the damage was already done. Tesla stock tells a different story than Tesla sales. Though shares finished 2025 up 11%. They had an all time high of $489.88 in mid December. Investors are not betting on the car business. They're betting on autonomy, robo taxis and humanoid robots. Wedbush analyst Dan ives called the Q4 results better than feared and said the AI and autonomous opportunity is worth at least a trillion dollars for Tesla. Deutsche Bank's Edison Yu said the narrative around Robotaxi remains strong, even though the fleet is smaller than expected. Musk bought a billion dollars worth of Tesla shares in September. Shareholders approved the new trillion dollar pay plan in November for Elon Musk, and the stock trades are roughly 200 times forward earnings despite two consecutive years of declining deliveries. Market is pricing a future that does not exist yet. Now BYD is not focused on that future. It's focused on making and selling cars right now. And Wang Chan Fu, the founder who started the company with 20 employees and $350,000 in 1995, has built a company that ships more electric vehicles than anyone on the planet. BYD began by making batteries for mobile phones, supplied Motorola and Nokia during the feature phone era, and then it acquired a small automaker in 2003 and launched its first car, a combustion model, two years later. Its first EV arrived in 2008. In the same year, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway invested $232 million in BYD at Charlie Munger's insistence. Now, Munger described Wang, is a combination of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Bill Gates. Now that stake is now worth billions of dollars. Now in 2020, BYD launched the Blade battery, a lithium ion phosphate design that offered improved energy density and safety compared to earlier LFP cells. Under manufacturers were moving away from LFP at the time, BYD doubled down. The Blade went into the Han sedan, a vehicle designed to compete directly with the Model S. And it worked. BYD's EV sales took off, and the company now controls its entire supply chain, from raw materials to finished vehicles and makes its own batteries. It owns semiconductors and its own software. And when supply chains collapsed during the pandemic, BYD kept building those cars. Vertical integration is the foundation of its cost advantage now. Elon Musk later admitted that a lot has changed since 2011. Their cars are highly competitive these days, he said. In 2023, now they are more than competitive. They're beating him. They're winning. The EV crown has changed hands finally, and the question is whether Tesla can get it back or whether Musk's bad on Robo taxis and robots will pay off before the car business shrinks further. But for now, the company that Musk dismissed as a joke is the one playing the joke on him, beating him at his own game. And they're making history. Tesla may still be worth more on paper, but BYD is selling way more cars than Elon. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform right now, I'd greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never and each episode is about 10 minutes to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you support the show even more.com stage zero and please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you tomorrow. The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals. Protecting your identity is an important step. Your info is in endless places that could expose you to identity theft leading to lost funds. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth part of your New year's goals with LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock. Com Podcast terms apply.
