BYD Is Too Daring

Left hand holds chips, right hand holds robots.

BYD, it's time to change the way it lives.

2026 will not be an easy year for the overall Chinese automotive industry.

Multiple listed automakers are experiencing profit cuts by half (or even deeper), stock price pressure, and even situations where shareholders complain directly to management at shareholders' meetings...

If looking only at BYD's financial reports and stock price, some might think this company is experiencing a crisis.

However, if looking at its technology reserves, overseas expansion, chip, and robot layout strategies, one might feel this is a 'tech giant' building up momentum.

These two completely opposite judgments reveal that this company 'only focused on new energy vehicles' is planning a grand chess game far beyond automobiles.

'Q1 2026 was a temporary darkest moment for the new energy vehicle industry.' BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu was very candid in his speech at the shareholders' meeting.

He stated directly that starting from January 1, 2026, the policy of exempting new energy vehicles from purchase tax in China was changed to half-rate collection. The policy retreat caused demand in November and December 2025 to be significantly front-loaded. Domestic NEV penetration rate dropped from 59.1% in December 2025 to 38.6% in January of this year, and rebounded to 44.9% in February.

In Q1 2026, BYD's revenue was 150.225 billion yuan, down 11.82% year-on-year; net profit attributable to the parent company was 4.085 billion yuan, down 55.38% year-on-year.

【Image Source: BYD Q1 Report】

However, Wang Chuanfu also gave his judgment: 'The worst moment has passed.' Due to the Middle East conflict and soaring oil prices, NEV penetration rates have continued to rise over the past two months.

In March of this year, BYD launched the 2nd Gen Blade Battery and Flash Charge technology, directly targeting the charging anxiety pain point of the 'first half' of electrification.

In May, BYD's NEV sales reached 383,500 units, a 0.26% year-on-year increase, with sales year-on-year turning positive for the first time in several months.

However, sales recovery is not a smooth path.

Wang Chuanfu stated, 'The overall sales volume in 2026 depends on the battery capacity release, with a larger capacity release in 2027.'

He stated that due to the huge difference in internal structure between the 2nd Gen Blade Battery production line and the 1st Gen, the original 1st Gen production line needs retrofitting and upgrading, and capacity ramp-up requires a cycle. Currently, capacity is ramping up with an increase of 20,000-30,000 units per month.

Battery capacity ramp-up solves the problem of 'how many cars to sell'. What BYD is planning is a story bigger than 'selling cars'.

If smart driving is the 'present tense' BYD is delivering, then chips and humanoid robots are the 'future tense' it is planning.

A week before the shareholders' meeting, Li Ke, Executive Vice President of BYD Group, confirmed in an interview program that BYD is developing humanoid robots.

She also stated, 'Competition in robots lies in who has the strongest manufacturing, software, and hardware capabilities, and automotive-related AI capabilities share the same origin with robots.'

Upon this news, the market went wild.

News circulated that BYD's humanoid robot code name was 'Yao, Shun, and Yu', planning to deploy 20,000 units internally in 2026. BYD immediately debunked the rumor, stating: related news were all untrue. But the 'debunking' itself proved another thing: entering the game is real, just the rhythm and scale were exaggerated.

In fact, BYD's layout in the robot field is far earlier and more systematic than outsiders imagine.

Its Embodied Intelligence Research Team was established in 2022 and has completed the development of several products including process robots, intelligent mobile robots, and humanoid-like robots.

On the investment side, in 2023 it invested in Zhìyuán Robot; in 2025 it acquired a stake in tactile technology company Pacini Perception Technology, becoming a major shareholder.

From Li Ke's statement, industrial robots are the focus at the present stage, because BYD itself is the largest user; in the future, once humanoid robots meet the conditions to enter homes, BYD can rely on its global dealer network to sell.

This is not cross-border chasing trends, but a translation and reuse of whole industry chain technical capabilities. Motors, electronic control, batteries, chips, contract manufacturing, the whole industry chain capabilities required for car manufacturing can almost be translated to the robot field. Currently, Chinese listed automakers like SAIC, Geely, GAC Group, etc. have started planning the automotive derivative industry.

Financial reports show BYD's total employee compensation expenditure in 2025 was 130.5 billion yuan. Using robots to replace high-repetition production line positions to reduce costs is highly logical.

Citi predicts that by 2050, the global humanoid robot market size will reach $7 trillion, with quantity reaching 648 million units.

For BYD, which is looking for a 'second growth curve', this is undoubtedly a track worth betting on. Currently, almost all major Chinese listed automakers are seeking to switch tracks,跳出 the saturated automotive market, and open up new blue oceans, especially in fields like Embodied Intelligence.

The hardware foundation supporting the long-term imagination of robots is chips and intelligent driving capabilities, which BYD is also delivering as 'present tense'.

BYD currently urgently needs to prove to the market that self-developed batteries, vehicle-mounted chips, high-order intelligent driving, and whole vehicle contract manufacturing businesses are not just supporting costs for the manufacturing link, but high-quality assets that can be independently commercialized externally and create incremental revenue.

Currently, BYD's assisted driving vehicle stock exceeds 3.15 million units, generating over 200 million kilometers of intelligent driving related driving data daily, with over 5,000 intelligent driving R&D engineers.

The self-developed 4nm process intelligent driving chip 'Xuanji A3' was launched and mass-produced on a large scale in May, with a total computing power of three chips exceeding 2100 TOPS.

From this set of data, BYD's entire intelligent driving system achieves integrated layout of underlying data, algorithms, and self-developed chips, forming a technical closed loop for continuous self-iteration and optimization.

Millions of vehicles on the road continuously collect real road condition data. Massive real-scene test data is a core advantage difficult for most enterprises focusing on intelligent driving R&D to reach. Once domestic L3-level autonomous driving regulations are formally and fully implemented, BYD possesses the innate conditions for rapid scaled implementation of high-order intelligent driving.

Wang Chuanfu had no hidden feelings about this: 'Once L3 regulations are implemented, BYD will take off rapidly.'

After telling the story of technology, back to the current most realistic growth engine for BYD — the overseas market.

After capacity ramp-up is completed, BYD will focus on the two core markets of home and overseas simultaneously, among which overseas business is the growth segment with the strongest certainty at the present stage.

In May of this year, BYD's overseas car sales reached 160,600 units, up 80.7% year-on-year, setting a new record high. For the first 5 months of this year, cumulative export sales reached 614,500 units, accounting for 35% of total sales.

Wang Chuanfu explicitly stated that the overseas export target of 1.5 million units for 2026 set at the beginning of the year 'is now expected to be exceeded'. Currently, BYD has completed 40.96% of this year's overseas export target.

Not only that, Wang Chuanfu also proposed medium and long-term goals: in five years, BYD should achieve true number one in the world in scale. By 2030, achieve a sales blueprint of 10 million units through overseas expansion.

To support the globalization strategy, BYD is no longer limited to whole vehicle product exports, but moves to promote the landing of the entire industrial system overseas.

On the production side, local factories in Thailand, Brazil, and Uzbekistan are already in production; the Hungary production base is about to start operations; the Indonesia factory has entered the mass production preparation stage. On the logistics support level, the customized Ro-Ro fleet expanded to 8 ships, with annual capacity for 250,000-300,000 whole vehicle sea transport.

What deserves vigilance is that the high-speed expansion of overseas business also brings undeniable cost pressures: EU anti-subsidy tariff policies targeting domestic new energy models are gradually implemented; new factories in various places belong to heavy asset investments, lengthening the profit return cycle; increasing the gross margin of the overseas segment still requires long-term operation sedimentation.

This problem has no shortcut, only by relying on production capacity scale and brand premium to solve step by step.

If sales volume is BYD's 'face', then stock price is its 'underlying value', and this 'underlying value' keeps shareholders restless and sleepless.

At the shareholders' meeting, a shareholder directly stated on the spot that the company's performance in the capital market is far inferior to CATL, he was deeply trapped with heavy position, severe losses, and felt 'very sad'.

Facing shareholders' doubts, Wang Chuanfu responded emotionally, 'BYD is my life.'

He stated: 'Everyone recognizes our potential, but now our stock price hasn't reflected it.' He hopes shareholders stay patient and promises 'we will definitely realize better returns for shareholders'.

【Image Source: BYD Annual Report】

From data comparison, the contrast between BYD's performance and capital market is indeed glaring: In 2025, BYD revenue was 803.965 billion yuan, net profit 32.619 billion yuan, profitability ranking first among passenger car listed companies.

However, since the annual report disclosure, BYD's stock price and market value have oscillated downward. As of the close on June 18, BYD A-share and HK shares reported at 88.13 yuan/share and 80.85 HKD/share respectively.

In the view of 'Auto K-Line', this is indeed related to BYD's continuous sales decline since this year and Q1 profit drop, but more likely because the market still uses the perspective of 'automobile manufacturer' to measure a company turning into a 'tech platform'.

Wang Chuanfu said the worst moment has passed. Behind this sentence lies BYD's fully laid-out technology layout and long-term capacity planning.

This plan has a clear promotion rhythm, but also needs to withstand real cost pressures: long-term losses during capacity ramp-up phase, huge funds continuously thrown into overseas factories, etc., everything is wearing out shareholders' patience.

Views of AutosKline:

What is truly worth following up on may not be whether sales volume can continue to 'turn positive' in a certain month, but that BYD is already not just a car selling enterprise, it is transforming into a comprehensive industrial entity covering energy, intelligent driving, high-end manufacturing, and industrial robots step by step.

This is also the fundamental reason why the market needs to revalue BYD. As for when value revaluation will come, it depends on the actual promotion effect of technology landing, capacity expansion, etc. Before that, all investors willing to wait long-term are essentially paying for BYD's long-term growth potential.

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