Beijing —
The world’s largest electric car maker is locked out of its biggest potential overseas markets.
But BYD, the Chinese EV giant, says the barriers that limit its and other Chinese automakers’ access from U.S. consumers won’t prevent it from remaining at the top of an industry that is changing the way people drive.
“Without the U.S. market, BYD would still be in a leading position,” Stella Li, the company’s executive vice president, told CNN in an interview on the sidelines of the Beijing auto show earlier this week.
The U.S. government has effectively banned Chinese automakers from entering the U.S. market, citing national security concerns and the need to protect American automakers from rivals that have benefited from Beijing’s long-term support for the EV sector.
These U.S. restrictions are expected to be in the spotlight next month when Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomes President Donald Trump to Beijing.
BYD’s Lee said he hopes the long-awaited summit will lead to change. “When you start a dialogue, you see business opportunities and then you should be open, because this is a win-win for both parties,” she said.
Still, Lee added that the automaker “has no future plans yet” for its cars to enter the U.S. market.
For now, it appears the company is expanding to other locations. The company reportedly aims to sell at least 1.5 million cars overseas this year, about 500,000 more than last year.
The expansion is essential for the automaker, which snatched the top spot as the No. 1 EV maker from Tesla last year but whose profits are shrinking in a round-robin battle with rivals for market share in China.
How the company pursues growth overseas could have major international implications. Automakers and their employees around the world are concerned about being overwhelmed by BYD’s extensive industrial capabilities and competitive pricing. Giving consumers access to more affordable EVs could accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels, providing a welcome alternative amid the global oil shock caused by the Iran war.
Mr. Lee already sees BYD benefiting from the current oil crisis, which is pushing up prices at filling stations.
“This is like a wake-up call for people who have never touched an EV,” he said, adding that BYD is already seeing a surge in demand in markets such as Australia and Indonesia.
The interest comes at a critical time for BYD.
The company, which transitioned from a battery maker to an automaker in the early 2000s, established an early lead over its domestic rivals by cracking the code for making EV batteries cheaply.
BYD cemented its lead by automating production and meticulously controlling its supply chain, including software and hardware.
The listed company enjoys a commanding lead of nearly 20% in China’s EV and hybrid market, according to industry data. And its global rise has given it a level of global fame never before achieved by a Chinese automaker.
But tougher times are ahead.
In 2025, the company posted its first annual profit decline in four years, down 19%, and in the first quarter of 2026, net profit fell by more than half year over year.
China’s demand for EVs has slowed after the Chinese government cut subsidies and perks for consumers, and there is no end in sight to fierce price competition as EV rivals crowd out to outperform and undercut each other.
“There’s no clear winner yet. BYD, right? They leapfrogged to 2024, then leapfrogged to 2025. So far this year, they’ve been under a lot of pressure,” industry analyst Lei Xing said, pointing to intense market one-manship in terms of product and feature rollouts.
BYD fell from its position as China’s biggest automaker earlier this year, being overtaken by rival Geely in domestic car sales in the first quarter, according to industry data. In an interview with CNN on Saturday, Geely senior vice president Victor Yang said he was “very confident” that the company maintained its momentum with “the right products in the pipeline” and consumer confidence.
When asked about BYD’s strategy to deal with domestic competition in the domestic market, Li clarified the strategy: “Not only the Chinese market, but also the global market is our target.”
Lee, the company’s most visible face internationally, has been driving BYD’s global push for decades.
She launched the company’s first international location in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in the late 1990s, and its first North American headquarters in Chicago in 2000, both before the company began manufacturing cars. She also ran BYD businesses in the Americas when the company opened an electric bus facility in Lancaster, Calif., in 2013.
Lee outlined to CNN a global strategy that bets on rapidly adding charging stations, batteries that fill up faster than a gas tank, and a design that localizes BYD vehicles for different markets.
Being global is “not enough,” she says. “We are currently working to make BYD a more local brand for each country.”
She described the reaction from European car dealers to the company’s sleek luxury sports car, the Denza Z9 GT, which was displayed in the form of a drop-top convertible at this week’s car show. “They’re saying, ‘Wow, I finally believe that a Chinese company can make luxury cars.'”
In Europe, BYD’s new car registrations rose more than 150% in the first quarter from a year earlier to more than 73,000 vehicles, about 5,000 behind Tesla, according to industry data. The brand’s planned passenger car manufacturing plant in Hungary is aimed at avoiding European Union tariffs on Chinese-made cars.
BYD also plans to open a production base in Thailand in 2024, and last year opened a vast Brazilian factory on a site previously occupied by US automaker Ford. The project was marred by a labor investigation, and BYD and its contractors settled late last year. The company plans to open another factory in Indonesia.
But BYD and other Chinese EV makers are desperate to gain market share overseas, and it’s not just by exporting cars or investing in local production. It is also a competition to build charging infrastructure.
When it comes to competition, Lee said BYD’s advantage lies in its rollout of so-called flash charging stations. He said around 6,000 of these stations will be built overseas within 12 months, and cars equipped with the technology will be able to charge from 20% to 97% in 12 minutes, even in sub-zero temperatures.
It will be a “huge game changer” for BYD, Lee said.
Another is continuing to invest in hardware and software to power rapidly advancing self-driving technology, a capability that automakers around the world are racing to master.
And the company is eyeing these investments with a clear purpose: “to make us even stronger for a future where AI is more mature,” Lee said.
