CHINA: BYD Overtakes Tesla, Geely’s Galaxy MPV and NIO’s Millionth Vehicle| 08 Jan 2026

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Welcome back to the podcast.

Today, BYD overtakes Tesla, Geely's Galaxy MPV and NEO's Millionth vehicle.

Plus, stay tuned.

Later in the show, I'll tell you why we shouldn't be laughing at the Chinese vacuum maker

that just showed up at CES with the hypercar.

Welcome to EV News China, the podcast dedicated to the world's largest electric vehicle market each day.

We bring you the latest headlines, insights and analysis from the heart of China's booming EV industry

and decode how fast moving developments in the east are shaping the global EV landscape.

BYD is overtaking...

overtaking Tesla in some big markets in Europe.

We're looking at Germany in the UK today.

Europe's two biggest EV markets underlining China's push into the region in Germany.

BYD registered more than twice as many new vehicles as Tesla in December,

according to the Federal Motor Transit Authority.

Over 2025 as a whole, BYD sales in Europe's biggest EV market jumped more than eight-fold.

To 23,306 cars, Tesla's German registrations halved to 19,390.

The picture is similar here in Britain, Europe's second largest market for EVs.

BYD, whose European range has things like the Dolphin hatchback,

moved the head of Tesla in September and has stayed there ever since.

It ended the year with 51,422 registrations compared with Tesla's 45,513,

according to the trade lobby here.

And globally, Tesla has already lost out on the crown as the top seller of electric cars to BYD.

Tesla posted a 16% drop in fourth quarter deliveries and its second yearly decline in a row.

BYD, despite weaker demand and a clamp down on discounting at home,

expanded overseas and delivered 2.26 million EVs last year against Tesla's 1.64 million.

Chinese makers have gained traction, particularly here in Britain,

actually, which hasn't copied the European Union tariffs on Chinese made EVs.

Their lower prices pull in more buyers in the market and

pushed Britain's new car registrations over 2 million.

Tesla is, meanwhile, facing headwinds across Europe.

Competition has sharpened as Volkswagen, Renault and BMW broadening their EV lineups with

genuinely innovative Vic was like the BMW iX3, their no-classer platform,

500 plus miles on the iX3, out innovating the once-leaded Tesla.

A consumer backlash as well against the CEO and political activities have added

reputational drag to the firm's sales in Europe.

If it was ever in doubt after losing its global crown to BYD,

which is now outgunning it in Germany and Britain, Tesla simply has to work harder,

and perhaps speak more softly if it wants to regain momentum in Europe's big EV markets.

Geely's Galaxy is a sub-brand of Geely Auto, and they've opened pre-sales for their V900.

That is an extended range MPV, up against things like BYD's Denzer D9 and similar rivals.

The V900 is the first model in Galaxy's V series, and comes in three all-wheel drive versions,

Pro Max and the Collector's Edition. A pre-sale prices start from $45,000 for the Pro,

and go up from $320,000 to $390,000 RMP. The V900 is an MPV, as I mentioned,

6-seater MPV. It's a big boy, 5.36 meters long, 2 meters wide, 1.94 meters high,

and a big wheelbase, 3.2 meters long. That puts it in the large premium people carrier segment.

The Chinese brands used to challenge the joint venture, the imported models as well,

all those. The MPV segment. Really interesting in China. Power comes from a range extender,

with batteries provided by CALB. Buyers can choose either a 43 kilowatt-hour pack or a 50 kilowatt-hour

pack. On the CLTC cycle, at least, electric only range 260 kilometers, and with a full fuel tank

and a fully charged battery, they side all do 1,220 kilometers. What's really impressive

about these EVs, though, the E-Revs, I should say, is the DC fast charging, 80% in 24 minutes.

Do you need to fill it with fuel? Very often depends how you drive it. 24-minute top-ups,

1,200 kilometers of potential range. If you do need to shift six people in a lot of comfort and

very high-tech long distances, Denza D9 could be facing some competition from the V900.

Now, NEO has made its one millionth mass-market vehicle a little over 11 years after its founding.

The car was a third-generation ES8 SUV, rolling off the line at their NEO Park in Hafei,

in China's Anhui province. NEO held a ceremony at the factory to mark the occasion.

The company said it would donate the milestone ES8 to a foundation for use by experts working in

quantum technology. The gesture links the brand to one of China's favoured high-end fields.

The million-vehicle mark comes roughly 20 months after NEO made their half-millionth car.

Does that make sense or not? You know what I'm trying to say.

Underscoring how fast its output has risen, despite a choppy market for EVs, the Hafei facility

known as the F2 factory in NEO Park is being central to their growth. During the event,

they unveiled a limited-edition sedan of the ET9. The firm presented this special

ET9 as a celebration of their milestone and their 11th anniversary as well. That was back in

after the 1 millionth ES8 rolled off the line at NEO Park. What matters now is whether the

factories can keep humming and whether 2026 can keep the growth going for NEO.

Now, Morgan Stanley expects grid-scale and energy storage installations to grow from 350

gigawatt hours last year to 600 gigawatt hours as it is presently, and more than 900

gigawatt hours by the end of the year. Well, capacity on paper is racing ahead,

but the real performance of many battery systems falls short of claims, they say.

The bank argues that the gap comes largely from a failure to focus on cells aging over time under

real conditions and on how their safety margins shift as they age. Weak understanding or poor

validation of long-term degradation, which we don't know because you can't simulate that in a lab

until the time literally goes by, can erode the economics of certain projects, inflate costs,

undermine trust, and Morgan Stanley frames deregulation control as the main competitive

battleground for storage manufacturers. The crucial metric will not be kilowatt hours

cost-installed, but cost per useful cycle over the life of the asset, they say. And on measuring

different batteries, they say that CATLs have the best degradation, or that should be the least

degradation. The way they put it is they lead degradation resistance. That's a critical indicator,

they say, for judging the quality of individual cells and full energy storage systems in which

they're in, and also it's a vote of confidence for the EVs that have CATL batteries as well.

Now, Lee Orto have had a bumpy 2025, so they're reorganizing, confirming a sweeping shake-up

of its product development structure after falling short of their sales target last year,

underlining pressure on what was once China's fastest growing maker of EREVs, extended range

electric vehicles. On January 1st, the company reported their deliveries for December,

44,246 vehicles. That took four-year deliveries to 405,943. The result was just 63% of their publicly

stated goal for the year, though, a 230,000-vehicle gap between ambition and reality. The miss

capped a year of strain at Lee Orto. At the start of 2026, the executive in charge of their product

line left to launch a new venture, his exit prompted a review of how the company's been running

product lines. Lee Orto acknowledged that their structure has led to overlapping functions,

splinter decision-making, the restructuring aims to pull these things together, cut duplication,

and centralize key choices. The company is betting that tighter design will support faster,

more coherent product development as it tries to close the gap between its sales targets and what

it can actually deliver. Now, Western carmakers are defying China's request to cool things down.

Carmakers and their dealers in China have begun this year with another round of sharp discounts,

ignoring Beijing's latest attempt to cool down the price war that gripped the market for the last

three years. BMW last week cut their official list price on 31 models they sell in China,

at the biggest reduction on the pure electric i7, that's the M70L version of the i7. They took

42,000 US dollars off the asking price. The steepest percentage cut, though, was for their little iX1,

sticker price dropped to 24%. The company called the move part of just regular price management,

stressing that final transaction prices are often independently negotiated and determined between

the dealers and the customers. But local media reporting that dealers for brands under VW Group

and GM joint ventures are moving as well to match fiercer competition, offering new discounts and

fixed price deals on selected models. The pressure is no longer confined to the premium segment either.

While buyers in America are facing high prices, China's problem is actually the reverse list

and transaction prices for new cars keep sliding, as manufacturers want to shift stock in at times

a sluggish market. The China passenger car association says retail sales fell in November,

second consecutive month I think for the drop, and China's state regulators responding with rules,

draft rules, to put a floor underneath prices. The proposals would ban selling vehicles below

production cost and outlaw dealer rebates that push transaction prices under cost.

Officials fear a deflationary spiral through the supply chain, leading parts makers to use

cheaper parts, lower quality components, putting more pressure on worker pay.

After three years of the press war and BMW's hair cut on the i7, Beijing's challenge is not

persuading car makers to sweeten the deal, it's to persuade them to stop. We'll take a break and

when we come back, more on the podcast, back in a sec.

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Okay, welcome back to EV News, China. I look at what's happening today in the east. Now,

one pedal driving is a feature that I wouldn't buy an EV without. My wife turns it off immediately.

She wants the car to coast and she wants to modulate the speed with her foot on the break.

On the other hand, just too lazy to move my foot. And so I love one pedal,

proper one pedal driving all the way down to a stop. Yes, please. It's how I drive the Polestar.

Familiar to many, it's going to be curbed by Chinese regulators. The system lets drivers slow and

I think on the best systems stop and people will argue me on that and say, well, no,

just down to a crawl is best and then stop with the brake pedal, which all of our other EVs have

done. By the way, this is the first completely stopping one pedal driving EV that we've had.

And I find the regen is nice and strong. Like I say, I think it's three.

Yeah, three settings on the Polestar. I think I'm right. And either way,

my wife has it on completely the lightest version of regen and she uses the brake pedal

to regen like our first Renault Zoe did 10 years ago. And so I love the regen by just letting my

foot off the pedal. It's central to how I drive from January the first next year, 2027.

A new national standard will bar car makers from shipping EVs in China with a default one pedal

setting that can bring the car to a complete stop without the brake pedal being pressed.

The function itself isn't banned. You can go into the menu and turn it on existing vehicles.

Haven't got to have a retrofit either. But other parts of the standard are going to arrive earlier

from this year. All new EVs in China must have anti lock brakes. Most would tick that I think

cars need to eliminate the brake lights whenever they decelerate faster than

it's about three miles an hour a second. It's 1.3 meters per second squared,

even if the driver isn't touching the brake that aligns with the Chinese rules

with other markets as well. And the changes follow some studies. Some look at behavior of

how EVs are driven, some actually accident investigations as well. And the Chinese regulators

feel that some drivers relying on one pedal driving have failed to, you know, signal to their

right foot, you need to hit the brake pedal because you've got to stop faster than this.

Almost that people are getting too lazy because of one pedal driving. In other cases, people have

pressed the accelerator hard thinking it was the brake pedal. Regulators in China argue that

forcing people to switch more frequently over to the brake pedal just reinforces that muscle

memory. It reminds you of where the pedals are. There will be an efficiency penalty stopping with

friction brakes turned kinetic energy into heat energy, not electricity to go back into the battery.

Mandated brake light activation during stronger regen also complicates some of the control

logic as well, but that'll be fixed. Stopping distances are defined though by the mass of the

car, the grip of the tires, the force of the brakes, not on whether energy gets recovered.

So that's probably going to be a byproduct. We'll lose a little bit of efficiency. One pedal driving

is also easy. I think in dense traffic, it can be less tiring. These are first world problems,

aren't they? But less tiring than shuttling your foot between two pedals, often producing,

I think, smoother progress. Look, China's new rules won't remove any benefits of one pedal

driving and regen, but it will be critical to how the brake pedal is going to be impossible to ignore.

Now, let's talk about why one Chinese company could be laughing on the other side of their face,

because plenty of people have poked fun at a vacuum cleaner company making an electric vehicle.

Two things come to mind here. Well, Dyson had a go at this and decided that it was going to be

very expensive. And also, if you look at the big Chinese companies now, look at Geely. Like,

Geely is now a mega corporation world famous. Well, they started off making replacement bits

for fridges in the 1980s. And so everyone's got to start somewhere, right? Now, Dream makes

vacuum cleaners and home appliances. They've been at CES this week with a four door hypercar

called the Dream Nebula One, the first public product of its automotive ambitions announced

last August. Dream was founded by Yu Hao and folded into the Xiaomi chain back in 2017.

It had previously confused enthusiasts with some rather generic digital renders

that looked like they'd been, let's say, heavily inspired by a Bugatti Chiron or a Rolls-Royce

Cullinan. Well, they actually put out some specific teasers a couple of weeks ago. We didn't talk about

it and confirmed that its first car would be on the show floor of Las Vegas. And now it is.

And actually looks a lot different. It's a very low slung four door sports car. They had it painted

green with some exposed carbon fiber. The bonnet slopes sharply. The headlights form kind of an L

shape. And the car rides on six spoke wheels with yellow brake calipers. The front pillars are made

of carbon fiber. And Dream claims the car uses four electric motors combined peak output of

1,400 kilowatts. That's almost 2,000 horsepower. Right. It says the car will do 0 to 62 miles an

hour in 1.8 seconds with active aero. And it puts the dream concept ahead of other Chinese

EP flagships like Xiaomi's SU7 Ultra. That's still a sub two second car, remember. For now,

all that they have shown though is concept. They didn't disclose production timing or pricing

or technical data. But hey, dream. Yes, the next step is obviously to prove that it's the Nebula one

will move from being a show floor spectacle to something more substantial and certainly not

vaporware. We'll wait and see what they come with. Thanks for listening to AV news, China. See you on the next one.

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CHINA: BYD Overtakes Tesla, Geely’s Galaxy MPV and NIO’s Millionth Vehicle| 08 Jan 2026

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