Chinese Automaker BYD Shows off a $233,400 Electric Supercar

From its inception, Chinese automaker BYD has had a global vision that’s been realized in Asia, Europe, and South America, but the company has had a conspicuously low profile in the U.S., where 25%import duties have so far kept the brand mostly out of the market. Indeed, U.S. lawmakers are urging even higher tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.

The U.S. blockade hasn’t stopped BYD (“Build Your Dreams”) from becoming the world’s biggest producer of EVs, passing Tesla. The company produced 3 million vehicles last year, with exports to 70 countries growing by a remarkable 334%. The company’s website has headlines such as “BYD Seal Launched in Nepal” and “BYD Enters Indonesian Passenger Car Market with three EVs.” Early investment in BYD by Warren Buffett seems to have been rewarded, though he sold some of his stock in 2022.

The EV supercar market has entries such as the Rimac Nevera, Lucid Air Sapphire, Maserati GranTurismo Folgore, and others, but few credible models from China. Now that may be changing with BYD’s sleek two-door US$233,400 Yangwang U9 (“Ultimate 9”) coupe, so far intended only for the Chinese market.

Competitive with those other supercars, it can reach 62 miles per hour in 2.36 seconds and attain a top speed of 192 mph. The U9 has 1,287 horsepower and 1,200 pound-feet of torque. The car was shown in a live launch stream from Shanghai on Saturday, and will reportedly reach customers as early as this summer.

BYD’s Yangwang U9 has the supercar look down pat.
BYD photo

The U9 has an 80-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, battery and 280-mile range on the Chinese Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle, which Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst for transportation and mobility at Guidehouse Insights, says is “notoriously optimistic.” The U9 has an 800-volt architecture and can reportedly use DC fast charging up to 500 kilowatts, with the ability to charge from 30% to 80% in 10 minutes.

The U9 has familiar supercar styling by the German designer Wolfgang Egger, complete with a pair of upswinging doors. Like other Chinese cars, it has its fanciful side—including four different “dance modes” that make use of its Discus X full active body control. In the event of a flat tire, it can run on three wheels. Other features include an adjustable rear wing and “the smartest supercar cockpit,” with two LCD screens (and provisions for a possible third). The U9 is around 16 feet long, roughly the size of a Lamborghini Aventador.

Yangwang is a new upmarket brand for BYD. The lineup includes the U8, a US$150,000 four-motor plug-in hybrid SUV with 1,184 horsepower and zero to 62 in 3.6 seconds. The U8 can reportedly stay afloat during emergencies. BYD has already delivered more than 3,000 of them. The U7 is a luxury electric four-door sedan, also with four motors, and a reported 1,300 horsepower and up to 500-mile range. The U7 starts at US$140,000.

BYD covers both ends of the market, and offers EVs that sell for less than US$14,000 in the Chinese market. BYD, which has sold some buses in the U.S., is considering production in Mexico, which would potentially be an easy export to the U.S. That prospect is alarming Western automakers. According to a recent report from the Alliance for American Manufacturing: “The introduction of cheap Chinese autos—which are so inexpensive because they are backed with the power and funding of the Chinese government—to the American market could end up being an extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector.”

Building Chinese cars in Mexico is “an effort to gain backdoor access to American consumers by circumventing existing policies that are keeping China’s autos out of the U.S. market,” the report said. Abuelsamid said that further tariffs are “a distinct possibility,” but not likely until at least 2025 because of Congressional gridlock.

Chip makers are fighting to assure investors that the artificial-intelligence boom is racing forward. Wall Street might not believe it until Nvidia’s NVDA -0.98%decrease; down pointing triangle Jensen Huang says so.

When Huang steps up to the mic for his company’s earnings call Wednesday, he will have the world’s attention. What he says about Nvidia’s present will preview the future of AI, dictate the path forward for a tech-crazed stock market and influence an American economy increasingly tethered to hopes that the boom won’t go bust.

The $5 trillion chip maker has provided the key building blocks for AI since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 set off a race for dominance among OpenAI, Anthropic and established Silicon Valley giants. Now, as Nvidia backstops sprawling data-center projects and an exotic money pipeline to boost chip demand, the company’s influence is arguably bigger than ever.

But there are signs of trouble ahead. Political pushback to AI is growing. A bond selloff propelled borrowing costs to their highest levels in years. The hyperscalers that include some of Nvidia’s key customers—once cash-printing machines—are relying more on debt. OpenAI recently told investors its revenue rose by a tepid 18% in the second quarter while its losses deepened.

Nvidia is increasingly stepping in to shore up potential weak points across the market. Earlier this month, the company teamed up with six of Wall Street’s biggest firms on a $500 billion AI-financing plan, pledging to backstop lending to customers that can’t afford its chips otherwise. The chip maker last week also took a stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which arranges power for data centers, and struck a $6 billion deal with startup Poolside aimed at developing a powerful open-weight AI model.

After watching shares in other chip makers and the so-called Magnificent Seven tech companies swing wildly in recent months, Wall Street is hoping Nvidia can beat expectations—again. The countdown is on.

“It’s kind of becoming more and more like the World Cup final than the Super Bowl at this point,” said Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management. “It’s just gotten to be that big.”

The company has smashed analysts’ earnings estimates for each of the 14 quarters since the AI boom kicked into high gear. Nvidia posted 210% annual growth in net income in its last three-month period, according to FactSet, making Wall Street’s 126% projection look pedestrian.

Expectations for a blowout second quarter have risen rapidly over the course of this year. All Nvidia will have to do to beat this target: outrun 95% annual earnings growth to more than $51.5 billion. Analysts project the chip maker will report record sales of $92 billion for the period, up from a forecast of $78 billion at the start of this year.

In July, big-tech earnings sparked volatility. Concerns about runaway capital spending spread across the sector after Alphabet’s and Tesla’s results, driving a $890 billion wipeout that contributed to the unwind of hedge fund Situational Awareness. Microsoft posted the largest one-day gain in market capitalization by any company, ever, after a quarter proving that it could still show investors the money. SpaceX rocketed higher after a record-breaking initial public offering, only to see $1 trillion in value evaporate.

Surging memory prices and borrowing costs have fueled fears that those and other companies will be unable to keep plowing more money into supplies including Nvidia chips. Shaia Hosseinzadeh, founder of OnyxPoint Global Management, has recently bought dips in AI-infrastructure stocks when Wall Street has strained to absorb massive debt issued by Silicon Valley.

“The macro data is really quite robust,” he said. “Of course, there’s a level at which everything breaks.”

Investors have kept pumping money into the AI trade despite concerns around chip consumers—and to the benefit of chip producers. That is why Nvidia’s outlook for semiconductor demand could send ripples through counterparts such as Micron Technology and Sandisk, developers of the data centers in which their chips reside, and a supply chain of power producers, contractors and other specialists that underpin the globe-spanning AI build-out.

“We joke internally that we’re all Nvidia analysts now,” said David Lefkowitz, head of U.S. equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.

The irony is that investors have tended to sell Nvidia stock immediately after blockbuster earnings, with shares falling each trading session after its four past quarterly reports. Some are betting that will be the case this time around, too.

The options market is pricing in a 5.3% swing, higher or lower, in Nvidia shares during the session following earnings, according to Option Research & Technology Services. That is higher than the 4.8% average move in Nvidia’s stock over the last 12 months after the company reports quarterly results.

In recent days, some of the most actively traded Nvidia options have been put contracts tied to the stock falling from its Friday value of $214.75 to $205 and $210 apiece, according to Cboe Global Markets data. Put options give the right to sell a stock by a set price and typically represent a bearish wager.

Many analysts remain optimistic. Frank Lee, global head of tech hardware and semiconductor research at HSBC Global Investment Research, recently raised his price target for Nvidia shares to $360 from $325, citing, among other things, Nvidia’s strategic partnerships with suppliers and its role as a top contributor to open-source AI.

Chinese Automaker BYD Shows off a $233,400 Electric Supercar

Nvidia’s earnings will test Wall Street’s confidence in the AI boom.