By Mahir Majid
Back in 2008, when the world was in serious economic crisis, Chinese automaker BYD had announced that it will be the leading auto manufacturer in terms of sales by 2015 in China and by 2025 in the world.
Now these are some really tall claims looking at the 5 year old company whose product line-up consists of about a dozen cars not more than a generation old and most of whose designing cues are imported (actually pirated is the right word) from neighboring countries. And companies like GM, Ford have gone bust trying to pursue that dream for almost a century.
Initially the company had doubling sales figures for the past 5 years and their 445,000 units sales for the year of 2009 made them believe that they could attain the 1 million mark by 2010. Eight months down the fact is that they have hardly reached 1/3rd of the projected target. When asked about these outlandish claims the company’s spokesman said that the company was a “little” overconfident regarding the sales targets.
Based on their above calculations they came to a conclusion that by 2015 they would be China’s largest auto manufacturers and in another 10 years they would lead the world market. To be able to make such conclusions you either have to be an 11 year old or in need of some serious help. And Warren Buffett holding 10% stake at BYD is not helping either and so is the Joint venture with Daimler to develop electric vehicles, as the company spokesman blamed the company’s lack of ability to expand its capacity on the weather.
There are other issues plaguing BYD to meet its tall claims as well. One of them being that 7 of the BYD factories are built on land purchased illegally whose verdict is due by the end of this month. The dealer pullouts in major cities are another cause of dropping sales figures.
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