Tesla’s move to slash prices in China has backfired as Elon Musk’s company loses market share to Warren Buffett-backed BYD, putting Chinese carmakers on track to sell more passenger vehicles than their foreign rivals for the first time in 2023.
Tesla last year started cutting prices on its cars in a bid to reclaim lost ground in the cut-throat Chinese market, sparking a price war in the country that has hit European, Japanese and other US carmakers.
Chinese consumers responded by favouring cheaper, newer models by BYD. In the first two months of the year, the Shenzhen-based group sold more than five times the number of units that Tesla did in China.