Numlock Sunday: Zeyi Yang on BYD
By Walt Hickey
Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.
This week, I spoke to Zeyi Yang, who wrote “Why the world’s biggest EV maker is getting into shipping” for MIT Technology Review. Here's what I wrote about it:
BYD is a Chinese electric car manufacturer that has become a reluctant entrant into the global shipping industry. The car manufacturer is building a fleet of roll-on, roll-off (RORO) shipping vessels, the first of which, BYD Explorer No. 1, having entered operation connecting China to European markets with 5,000 cars aboard. It’s in part because vehicle exports is simply a new game here: BYD shipped 55,000 vehicles overseas in 2022, which jumped to 240,000 vehicles in 2023 and is poised to go higher if only BYD can obtain the means by which to actually ship the cars. RORO vessels have been a bit rare to come by because of knock-on effects of the 2008 recession, and typically vehicle manufactures will own their own RORO fleets, like Nissan and T…