BYD now has more than one million employees
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Chinese automaker BYD now employs more than 1.02 million people, according to Electrek. That makes the company larger in headcount than Toyota, GM, Ford, and Tesla combined. In 2026, the number of employees has grown significantly — by around 150,000 since the beginning of the year.
Vertical Integration Drives Growth
The vast majority of BYD’s workforce (around 960,000) is based in China. Only around 60,000 employees work abroad. Up to 120,000 of them are research and development engineers, according to Chairman Wang Chuanfu. Wang disclosed these figures on Wednesday on stage at the 33rd Annual Conference of the China Society of Automotive Engineers (CSAE).
Wang attributes this scale to vertical integration. In his view, it was the in-house manufacturing of batteries, chips, and motors that transformed BYD from a battery manufacturer founded in 1994 into the world’s best-selling brand for alternative-drive vehicles — for several consecutive years. He described the company’s rise as a microcosm of the Chinese automotive industry’s evolution from imitator to market leader.
Growth Following a Temporary Wave of Layoffs
The company employed around 570,100 people at the end of 2022 and approximately 703,500 at the end of 2023. It then launched a massive hiring drive. In 2024, BYD surpassed the 900,000-employee mark. With more than 110,000 engineers, BYD could claim the largest R&D workforce of any automaker. The company closed 2024 with 968,900 employees.
Then came the first major round of layoffs. BYD’s 2025 annual report showed approximately 869,600 employees at year-end — a decline of around 99,000, primarily affecting production roles. Now the figure is back above one million.
BYD’s Business Grows Only Abroad
The gap with traditional automakers is enormous. The Volkswagen Group, counting its Chinese joint ventures, reported exactly 662,942 employees at the end of 2025. Toyota had more than 390,000 employees as of March 31, 2026. In the US, Ford closed 2025 with 169,000 employees, GM with 156,000. Tesla reported a global headcount of 134,785 in its most recent 10-K filing.
Adding Toyota, GM, Ford, and Tesla together yields approximately 851,000 employees. BYD has around 170,000 more than that. Yet while the workforce grows, global vehicle sales cannot keep pace. The company sold just over 3.1 million vehicles in the first nine months of 2026, a decline of 3.9 percent compared to the same period last year. The company is locked in a fierce domestic price war and is losing ground to competitors such as Geely and Leapmotor. Both revenue (just over $50 billion) and net profit (around $1.8 billion) in the first half came in below prior-year figures.
All growth is happening abroad. BYD’s international sales reached 1,342,960 units through September, an increase of 92.7 percent, now accounting for approximately 43 percent of total volume. On top of that, BYD once again outpaced Tesla in pure electric vehicle deliveries in the second quarter.
