BYD is taking over the world. It has just met its match

Chinese firms may face crippling tariffs when Trump is in the White House. They will have to find workarounds - like they did before.

- Lin Suling

The creation of the modern car introduced several American and European names to the world in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

The list includes Carl Benz, father of the automobile industry, credited with building the first petrol-powered car, Rudolf Diesel who invented diesel and the diesel engine, and Henry Ford, whose Model T not only became a household car but also birthed the modern manufacturing assembly line.

More than 100 years later, with the advent of the electric vehicle (EV), we are witnessing a second car industrial revolution. Almost every new car purchased in Scandinavian countries like Norway is an EV, unclenching the grip on the auto industry legacy car makers have had for decades.

This time, however, the names are South African or Chinese. And if estimates are correct, Mr Elon Musk's Tesla is about to lose its pole position in the global EV market to Mr Wang Chuanfu's BYD in 2024, when the final numbers are tallied.

BYD is also on track to have outsold Ford in 2024, in a bloody industry where traditional giants like Nissan and Honda are considering a merger just to survive.

The carmaker is now bracing itself for its biggest challenge - a determined US President-elect Donald Trump and his promise to slap brutal tariffs on Chinese firms. BYD and other nimble-footed enterprises from China have faced storms before and found ways to survive. Can they weather Typhoon Trump?

THE RISE OF ADAPTIVE CHINESE ENTERPRISE

BYD - which stands for Build Your Dreams - started as a battery maker for brands like Motorola. It announced plans to move upstream and make electric and hybrid vehicles in 2003 to great doubt and was promptly punished in the stock markets.

"We almost gave up," Mr Wang recently told Chinese media in recollecting his two-decade journey.