The company at the leading edge of the electric car revolution may no longer be Tesla as the Chinese EV maker BYD is set to become the world’s largest this year. And it could well be because unlike Tesla’s iconoclastic leader Elon Musk whose attention is smattered across solving many of humanities’ problems, the BYD founder Wang Chuanfu focuses on one and only one thing – electric cars.
“The 58-year-old Wang, who studied battery metal chemistry in college, started making cellphone batteries in 1995. He continually refined the technology for bigger car batteries—attracting attention and investment cash from Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett along the way. As the company grew, Wang steered it into complementary businesses such as battery storage, semiconductors and solar, but he always worked to keep prices low, in line with BYD’s “Build Your Dreams” motto.
In addition to being an innovator who spotted the prospects of battery-making early on, Wang is known as a management execution specialist. He saw vertical integration as key to BYD’s strategy: The lower costs that came from controlling his supply chain gave him a standout advantage over rivals.
Charlie Munger, the late vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, hailed Wang as a fanatical engineer and a genius who saved BYD in its formative years from going broke with his own 70-hour workweeks. Munger said Wang’s willingness to understand concepts and actually make things, practically with his bare hands, made him better than Musk.
Bill Russo of Shanghai-based consultants Automobility says Wang “is to the 21st century EV industry what Henry Ford was to the 20th century automotive industry: Both entrepreneurs leveraged vertical integration and economies of scale to democratize mobility.””
BYD’s patents include one for low-cost lithium-ion-phosphate battery that’s also used by Tesla among others like Ford and Toyota.
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