BYD now employs more than 1.02 million people, more than Toyota, GM, Ford and Tesla combined

BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu said the company now has more than 1.02 million employees, a workforce larger than Toyota, GM, Ford and Tesla combined. He gave the figure on Wednesday, October 28, at the China Society of Automotive Engineers 33rd annual conference. About 960,000 of those workers are in China and about 60,000, roughly 6 percent, are abroad.

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Up to 120,000 of the workers are engineers working on battery cells, motors, electronic controls and semiconductors. The total is about 150,000 above the 869,600 recorded at the end of 2025, a gain that came in roughly ten months and follows a year in which BYD shed frontline production jobs.

The combined headcount of four rivals

Electrek’s Fred Lambert put the comparison in his report on a single ledger. Toyota had 390,927 employees as of March 31, 2026, a different date from the others, GM had 156,000 at the end of 2025 and Ford had 169,000. Tesla had 134,785, a number that matches the employee count in its annual report filed with the SEC. Added up, the four come to about 851,000, which leaves BYD roughly 170,000 ahead.

The comparison needs the date caveat, because the Toyota figure is from a fiscal year-end three months earlier than BYD’s October number. It also compares unlike things: Toyota’s group sales of 11.3 million vehicles, counting Daihatsu and Hino, work out to roughly 29 vehicles per employee, and Tesla’s 1,636,129 deliveries in 2025 to about 12. The individual rivals are not close. Tesla’s 134,785 employees built and delivered 1,636,129 vehicles in 2025, GM and Ford each employ fewer than 170,000 people, and Toyota, the largest of the four, is below 400,000 even before the date caveat. BYD’s headcount is more than 2.6 times Toyota’s alone, and more than seven times Tesla’s.

What the 1.02 million actually covers

BYD is not only an automaker. It makes its own batteries, semiconductors and parts, and its headcount includes BYD Electronic, a majority-owned contract manufacturer that reported 165,000 employees at the end of 2025. A commenter on Electrek’s story, ModernMarvalFan, made the same point, noting BYD’s mix of carmaker, parts supplier, battery maker and contract manufacturer.

One detail makes the contract-manufacturing wrinkle concrete: BYD Electronic’s 165,000 employees alone outnumber Tesla’s entire workforce of 134,785. Counting a subsidiary that assembles electronics for other companies inflates a headline comparison with automakers that outsource such work, even though BYD includes those workers in its reported total. On output per worker the picture reverses. BYD sold about 4.6 million vehicles in 2025, or about 5.3 per employee, so Toyota gets more than five times as many vehicles per employee and Tesla more than twice as many. Volkswagen Group, counting its Chinese joint ventures, had 662,942 employees and about 13.5 vehicles per employee, while Stellantis had 258,668.

Geography is a second wrinkle. Wang’s split of about 960,000 workers in China and about 60,000 abroad shows how domestic the payroll still is, even as overseas sales have become a large share of volume. The 120,000-engineer figure he cited is also higher than the more than 110,000 BYD claimed in September 2024, though the two numbers were given in different settings and may not count the same people.

A headcount that rose, fell and rose again

BYD’s workforce has not moved in a straight line. It stood at 570,100 at the end of 2022, 703,500 at the end of 2023 and 968,900 at the end of 2024, a year in which the company had already passed 900,000 by September and claimed the largest R&D workforce of any carmaker with more than 110,000 engineers.

Then 2025 brought a cut. BYD’s annual report put year-end 2025 headcount at about 869,600, a drop of roughly 99,000 that was mostly frontline production jobs, which industry coverage of the annual report described as the company’s first major headcount decline. S&P Global Market Intelligence data had it at 911,900 at the end of June 2026, so the hiring that took it past 1.02 million has been quick.

The hiring is happening while sales soften. BYD delivered 3,131,576 vehicles in the first nine months of 2026, down 3.9 percent, though September was its best month at 463,561 units and overseas sales were 1,342,960 units, up 92.7 percent and about 43 percent of volume. First-half revenue was 344.8 billion yuan and net profit 12.3 billion yuan, both lower than a year earlier. Electrek’s earlier comparison of BYD and Tesla battery-electric sales in the second quarter shows how closely the two track each other on volume.

The output-per-worker gap may be widening. Annualizing the 3,131,576 vehicles sold in the first nine months gives roughly 4.2 million for 2026, which spread over 1.02 million employees is about 4.1 vehicles each, below the 5.3 of 2025. That is a rough estimate from Electrek’s figures rather than a number BYD has published, and a strong fourth quarter would lift it.

BYD has not published a breakdown of where the added 150,000 workers sit, and Wang’s remarks are the only source for the 1.02 million total so far. The next annual report will show whether the number holds.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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