BYD has surpassed 1 million employees, putting its reported workforce above the combined headcount of Toyota, General Motors, Ford and Tesla. Chairman Wang Chuanfu announced the 1.02 million figure on October 28 at the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China.
About 960,000 BYD employees are based in China, while roughly 60,000 work overseas. The latest cited employee totals for Toyota, GM, Ford and Tesla add up to approximately 851,000—around 170,000 fewer than BYD's workforce.
BYD's scale extends beyond vehicle assembly. The group makes many components internally that rival automakers source from suppliers, while its operations also include battery sales to other brands, energy storage, rail transport and BYD Electronic, which manufactures devices for other companies. BYD Electronic alone employed about 165,000 people at the end of 2025.
The company says as many as 120,000 people work in research and development, a figure close to Tesla's entire workforce. Those teams cover several core technologies:
- Batteries
- Electric motors
- Electronic control systems
- Semiconductors
That broader structure means vehicle sales per employee is not a complete measure of BYD's productivity, since a significant share of its workforce supports businesses beyond cars.
The hiring growth has come after a sharp swing in staffing. BYD ended 2024 with about 968,900 employees, fell to 869,600 at the end of 2025, and has added roughly 150,000 people since the start of 2026.
The expansion also contrasts with BYD's vehicle-sales trend. The company sold approximately 3.13 million vehicles in the first nine months of 2026, down 3.9% year over year. International sales moved in the opposite direction, rising 92.7% to about 1.34 million units, or nearly 43% of total deliveries.
With only about 6% of its employees located outside China, BYD's manufacturing and engineering base remains heavily concentrated in its home market even as overseas vehicle deliveries account for an increasingly large share of its sales.
