Friday, August 15, 2025

Meet the EV exec behind ‘Elon Musk’s worst nightmare’

In today’s edition: Tapestry’s write-down, women’s baseball is back, and an EV exec you should know.

– Going global. In the latest issue of Fortune is a story about an exec you should know. Stella Li isn’t the CEO or founder of BYD (that’s Wang Chuanfu)—but she’s the face of the electric vehicle maker’s global expansion beyond China.

For those who are not immersed in the EV world, BYD is the biggest seller of battery-powered cars in the world—and what my colleague Vivienne Walt calls “Elon Musk’s worst nightmare.” BYD is increasingly a true competitor to Tesla. China produced 70% of EVs last year and American manufacturers made less than 10%. While tariffs may stall its expansion in the U.S., BYD’s global prospects are looking good. In this piece, Viv explores the company’s expansion in Europe.

BYD’s Stella Li (center), poses with China’s ambassador to Austria and an Austrian steel executive after signing a deal in Vienna.PHOTOGRAPHS BY BALINT BARDI for FortuneWhich brings us to Li. Her titles include executive vice president and CEO of BYD Americas and Europe. BYD was originally a battery maker, and Li was a statistician. Now, she’s behind a rapid global expansion that she describes: “From the first electric car to the first 1 million cars, it took us 13 years. Then, from 1 million to 3 million it took us 18 months. Now we are adding 1 million cars every two months.”

Driving a European expansion right now, she admires Europe’s history in auto. “European companies have a legacy; they have a lot of traditions,” she says. But she’s proud of what BYD has accomplished—and where that will take the industry in the future. “We were too small. Nobody looked at us,” she says of her first years at BYD. Now, “in China, we put all our money, all our R&D expenses, into [EVs].” She’s ready for it to pay off.

Read Viv’s full story—with much more about BYD’s European plans—here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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