You may have heard the headline — an electric vehicle whose maker says can become fully charged in five minutes. It's a reminder that China's fastest-growing electric vehicle maker is no longer named Tesla.
BYD is now the world's top producer of electric vehicles, overtaking Tesla just last year.
But donʻt go looking for your local BYD dealer. The passenger vehicles are not sold in the United States.
Electric buses by BYD are available in this country — in fact, the company has been making them at a plant in California since 2014, selling them to customers from the Los Angeles airport to clients in more than a dozen other states.
On Monday, BYD announced a new platform for EVs that it says can charge a vehicle in five minutes with enough electricity to travel nearly 250 miles.
They require special charging units, and BYD plans to build more than 4,000 of them across China.
The timeline is not clear on any of this in terms of when it will reach the Chinese consumer. But the announcement was enough to send BYD's stock to a new 52-week high in Tuesday trading in Hong Kong.
The company has not been a stock market secret. Warren Buffett first invested in BYD in 2008.
Buffett also started selling its stock more than two and a half years ago, and sold more shares last year, decreasing his ownership stake as political stakes shifted for Chinese electric vehicles.
