BYD's stock price hits a record high, surpassing Tesla's stock price this year

Recently, BYD's stock price has performed strongly, reaching a historic high, highlighting the market's optimistic attitude towards its intelligent driving layout.

On Tuesday, BYD's H-shares rose by as much as 4.5%, reaching an all-time high, after the stock had risen for three consecutive trading days, entering the overbought zone.

So far this year, BYD's stock price has accumulated an increase of over 20%, with a market value reaching $132 billion, surpassing the combined total of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.

In contrast, Tesla's stock price has fallen by 13% during the same period, and BYD's valuation is still far lower than Tesla's, with BYD's forward price-to-earnings ratio currently around 18 times, below its 5-year average, and less than one-fifth of Tesla's.

What draws market attention is that BYD launched a high-end intelligent driving system overnight, sparking a new round of price wars.

BYD announced at a press conference held at its headquarters in Shenzhen on Monday that it will standardize the "Eye of God" intelligent driving assistance system in models priced above 100,000 yuan and will expand this system to include several lower-priced models such as the Seagull. This move is seen by industry analysts as the beginning of a new round of price wars in the electric vehicle market.

BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu stated that 2025 will be the "year of popularization of intelligent driving," and it is expected that in the next 2-3 years, intelligent driving will become a standard feature like seat belts or airbags. In addition, BYD plans to integrate DeepSeek's artificial intelligence software.

Morgan Stanley analyst Tim Hsiao pointed out that BYD's intensive launch of new models may make it difficult for competitors to respond in a timely manner. Jefferies analysts believe this will accelerate the popularization of navigation autonomous driving functions in the mass market and trigger an upgrade wave among existing users.

Moreover, BYD's update on intelligent driving has also sparked a new round of price wars. Independent Chinese automotive analyst Xing Lei stated that this is essentially a price cut without lowering prices, using intelligent feature updates as a pretext, covering almost all models of the BYD brand. From the market performance perspective, other automotive stocks in the Hong Kong market fell on Tuesday, with Geely Automobile down about 10%, XPeng down 9%, Great Wall Motors down about 7%, and Li Auto down about 6%.

Additionally, looking at this year's delivery targets, BYD's sales are expected to further increase, as BYD plans to deliver 5 to 6 million electric and hybrid vehicles by 2025, a significant increase compared to 4.27 million in 2023.

It is worth noting that last year, BYD narrowly missed surpassing Tesla to become the global champion in pure electric vehicle sales by less than 25,000 units. However, BYD is expected to break the $100 billion annual sales mark for the first time in 2024, surpassing Tesla to become the revenue leader in the global electric vehicle market