BYD now has more than 1.02 million employees, according to chairman Wang Chuanfu. That’s more people than Toyota, GM, Ford, and Tesla employ combined.
📌 The Core Development
And it’s a big jump from the start of the year. BYD reported about 869,600 employees at the end of 2025, which means the Chinese automaker has added roughly 150,000 people in 10 months while its vehicle sales are down.
Roughly 960,000 of BYD’s people work in China and about 60,000 work abroad. Up to 120,000 of them are R&D engineers, according to Wang, who shared the figures on stage Wednesday at the China Society of Automotive Engineers’ (CSAE) 33rd annual conference. Their work covers battery cells, motors, electronic controls, and semiconductors.
🔍 Background & Sector Context
Wang credits vertical integration for that scale. In his telling, keeping batteries, chips, and motors in-house is what took BYD from a battery maker founded in 1994 to the world’s top-selling new energy vehicle brand several years running. He called the company’s rise a microcosm of China’s auto industry going from follower to leader.
BYD’s workforce has been all over the place in the last few years.
📊 Industry & Real-World Impact
The company had about 570,100 employees at the end of 2022 and 703,500 at the end of 2023. Then it went on a hiring spree. We reported in September 2024 that BYD had passed 900,000 employees and claimed the largest R&D workforce of any automaker, with over 110,000 engineers. It ended 2024 with 968,900 people.
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🔮 Strategic Outlook & What Lies Ahead
Then came the first big cut. BYD’s 2025 annual report showed roughly 869,600 employees at year-end, a drop of about 99,000, mostly in frontline production jobs.
Now it’s back over a million. Data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence put BYD at 911,900 employees at the end of June, so the company added more than 100,000 people in about four months.
