Comment by alephnerd

I wouldn't understate BYD, but Tesla did play a massive role in helping build China's domestic EV ecosystem because Tesla also worked on building a supplier ecosystem in China, which also helped incubate much of the Chinese ecosystem.

That said, BYD is outcompeting most other Chinese players as well, and it can be argued that this is due to the fact that BYD is also a private sector player unlike most of it's domestic competitors.

The only competitor in China that can compete against BYD is SAIC - an SOE owned by Shanghai's government.

That said, the EV glut has become a significant headache from a local government fiscal perspective - the majority of Chinese automotive companies are owned by state and local governments - a large number of whom ended up spending eye bleeding amounts of yuan on EVs despite no competitive advantage, and it's these state and local governments that are now increasingly holding the bag - which Chinese market regulators have increasingly raised red flags about [0] (and I myself foreshadowed on HN a couple times [1][2]).

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275541