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BYD’s profit could double in Q1, as deliveries keep racing ahead of Tesla

The Chinese EV giant delivered 1 million+ cars in Q1 and continues to pull ahead on some pretty huge metrics.

4/9/25 11:28AM

In its preliminary earnings for the first quarter on Tuesday, electric automaker BYD revealed that net income could jump as much as 119% in the first 3 months of the year to 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), after delivering more than 1 million EVs across Q1 — up almost 60% on the same period last year.

Easy ride

While Trump’s tariffs have been a major bump in the road for other automakers, BYD — which had no plans to sell cars in the US owing to existing tariffs, even before this latest round — has had a pretty smooth year so far, with shares hitting a record high in March, after the company announced its market-leading superfast charging tech.

Less than a week later, execs and investors at the Shenzhen-based company had even more to cheer, after the EV giant posted 777 billion yuan ($107 billion) in sales across 2024, surpassing US rival Tesla’s annual revenue figures for the first time in 7 years.

BYD lagging Tesla on that measure has often been down to the Chinese automaker’s comparatively cheap cars, too, with one of its most popular EVs starting around $10,000. On model deliveries overall, BYD has been pulling ahead for years now.

Per numbers from CnEV, a company that tracks China’s electric vehicle market, BYD delivered just over 1 million EV units in the first 3 months of 2025, compared to Tesla’s 336,681 shipments over the same period, which disappointed investors in Elon Musk’s car company. Although Tesla’s recent struggles around the world have certainly led to more daylight between the two EV makers in recent months, the gap has looked increasingly difficult for the American automaker to close ever since it first ceded the lead in 2022.

In bad news for Tesla execs and investors, some worry that tariffs might only widen the gulf between the two.

Thank you, Mr. President

Speaking with the New York Post recently, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said that they were “probably drinking champagne” at BYD headquarters as Trump announced the tariffs, adding that the new restrictions only “accelerate BYD’s success,” and estimating that the tariffs could force additional costs of as much as $100 billion on automakers like Tesla each year.

Investors took note of the company’s better-than-expected preliminary results, pushing shares up as much as 7.8% on Tuesday, with BYD up ~20% so far this year, while Tesla has declined more than 40% in the same period.

Rani Molla

Two’s a crowd

Lucid announces Cybercab competitor and self-driving tech subscription in a bid to take on Tesla

Lucid’s vehicle has two seats and no steering wheel... a lot like another vehicle we’ve been hearing a lot about lately.

Matt Phillips9h

Palantir announces slew of defense- and security-themed partnerships

Defense, intelligence, and AI software company Palantir Technologies announced a series of security-themed partnerships Thursday, ahead of its annual conference promoting its artificial intelligence software platform (AIP).

Shares were recently up 1.7%, stretching the stock’s gains over the past month to 19%.

The deals include partnerships with uranium enrichment company Centrus Energy, jet engine maker GE Aerospace, unmanned aerial vehicle maker Ondas, and privately held World View, which sells intelligence and surveillance balloons that operate in the upper atmosphere.

Separately, it also announced a new “sovereign AI OS reference architecture,” a collaboration Palantir says “delivers customers a turnkey AI data center from hardware procurement to application deployment.”

Reference architectures are effectively blueprints that tell organizations how to set up and use AI hardware and software systems.

Known as the Palantir OS Reference Architecture, it’s based on similar AI blueprints Nvidia already sells, and it will enable customers to use Palantir’s entire product set, including the AIP and Foundry, its data organization and management product.