BYD now has 1.02 million workers, more than Toyota, GM, Ford, and Tesla combined
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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.
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.
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.