At the headquarters of BYD Co. in Shenzhen, there’s a wall crammed floor to ceiling with about a thousand framed patents representing more than 30,000 innovations the electric-vehicle maker’s billionaire founder, Wang Chuanfu, and his army of engineers have devised.
A wall displays patent certifications held by BYD in an exhibition area at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen.
The patents—for breakthroughs such as the low-cost lithium-iron-phosphate battery that’s also used by rivals including Ford, Tesla and even Toyota—are among the invisible assets turning Wang’s company into the world’s biggest EV maker. After selling 3 million electric and hybrid vehicles in 2023 and logging $85 billion in revenue, it’s on course to overtake Tesla Inc. this year. Now Wang is further disrupting China’s EV industry with cars costing less than $10,000, bringing affordable transport to the masses— once an Elon Musk goal.
The success of Wang’s two-decade bet on EV tech has led many to call him the Elon Musk of China. But unlike the Tesla co-founder, whose ventures range from EVs to space travel to brain implants to tunnel boring, the BYD chief has been far more focused.
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.”