BYD Has 538 Obtained New Patent Authorizations This Year Already (2025) – CleanTechnica

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One of our readers who follows BYD closely dropped a comment under an article earlier today, referencing an article from China. “BYD has obtained 538 new patent authorizations this year, an increase of 216.47% over the same period last year,” he quoted (using machine translation).

I initially couldn’t believe that was the total so far in 2025. I thought maybe it was old news from the end of 2024, or perhaps something was lost in translation.

But, no, this was just for 2025 — the first two weeks of 2025 (almost). “That works out to roughly 40 per calendar day awarded, 50 per working day so far this year,” our reader, Larry Evans, wrote. Indeed, 50 patents per working day. Insane.

Of course, Larry has known and been pointing out for several months that BYD’s innovation is at another level. In particular in a comment thread comparing BYD and Tesla, Larry wrote, “BYD invests more in R&D and employs by far the most R&D engineers of any automaker. BYD has more clean tech IP. BYD is more vertically integrated. BYD makes all of its own batteries and supplies most of the materials within them. BYD has a larger business beyond automotive with a larger electronics, ESS, and solar presence (although these are lower-margin segments). BYD has a much larger commercial vehicle presence. And BYD is selling most of their vehicles below the $30,000 price point that Elon has been promising for over a decade but has never delivered upon.”

There’s a lot more of interest in that extended comment that I turned into a standalone CleanTechnica article, but here’s probably the most important line when it comes to this patent news, so I’ll put it in bold as well: “Not only do they have 110,000+ R&D engineers, but they work in a comprehensive digital twin system where even a minor change to a component almost instantly updates every other aspect, from aerodynamic, mechanical, and electrical loads to manufacturing tooling. Because they make almost all of the vehicle, the integration with the digital twin is seamless and lets them develop and optimize vehicles and the systems within them in a fraction of the time. If you are actually aware of everything BYD is doing, it is almost impossible not to be impressed.”

Even better, in a separate article a couple months later, in December 2024, Larry wrote: “Apple has increasingly shifted to a BYD partnership across China, Vietnam, and India. BYD currently has roughly 100,000 employees and 10,000 engineers dedicated to the Apple supply chain — roughly 1/9th of their total employees and 1/12th of their engineers. This isn’t just assembly, but also developing much of the technology within Apple devices and producing a large share of the components. If you own a recent Apple device, much of it is likely from BYD.” Wait, why are we talking about Apple consumer devices now? Because BYD is taking a similar approach in the car industry. It’s out-innovating everyone while rapidly scaling up.

“When people realize that China now educates as many degreed engineers in a little over a year as the entire US engineering workforce, many get scared. BYD’s R&D engineering workforce alone is easily more than all US-based automakers combined.”

By the way, even by BYD’s standards, 2025 is looking to be a blockbuster year. Those 538 new patents noted at the top, they’re a 216.47% increase year over year from new BYD patents in early 2024. “Combined with the company’s 2024 interim financial data, the company invested 19.621 billion yuan in research and development in the first half of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 41.82%.” That’s $2.7 billion USD.

BYD also has a new car that can jump over a pothole. Yes, the Yangwang U9 costs over $200,000. But the point is that BYD is out there breaking new ground — at the top end of the auto market as well as the bottom end. And now there are spy shots out for another surely super-high-performance … supercar.

Years ago, Charlie Munger got Warren Buffett to buy a lot of BYD shares via Berkshire Hathaway when Munger was deeply impressed by BYD Founder, CEO, and Chairman Wang Chuanfu. They broke their rules for investing in this case because Munger was so impressed with Wang Chuanfu and convinced Buffett to make an exception on this one. It sure seems like a case where Munger’s 6th sense for investing really kicked in and he made a brilliant choice.

So, to wrap up, how many new patents do you think BYD will walk away with in 2025?