E108: AI Drama - BYD vs Tesla: How Elon Musk Lost the Present — and Might Still Win the Future

October 2011, Bloomberg Television.
Elon Musk dismisses BYD as “a battery company from Shenzhen” and says they should focus on not dying in China.

Fifteen years later:

• BYD sells 2.26 million pure EVs
• Tesla production declines two years in a row
• BYD’s European sales grow +300%, UK +880%
• BYD becomes the world’s #1 EV manufacturer

This episode isn’t about cars.
It’s about AI strategy, philosophy, and execution.

TWO AI PHILOSOPHIES

Tesla

• Vision-only autonomy
• Andrej Karpathy, Dojo, FSD
• Massive real-world driving data
• AI is the product
• Long bet on robotaxis and a “god-brain” for cars

BYD

• Extreme vertical integration (mines, batteries, factories)
• Incremental autonomy at scale
• God’s Eye autonomous system, standard and free
• DeepSeek AI integrated even in €10,000 cars
• AI is a feature, democratized

THE BREAK

• Karpathy leaves Tesla
• 200 AI engineers exit
• Dojo is shut down
• The promised low-cost “Model 2” never ships

At the same time, BYD delivers:

• Seagull (~$10k EV)
• Seal (Model-3 competitor)
• Yangwang U8 (luxury tech showcase)
• Autonomous features without subscriptions

Execution beats vision — for now.

THE TWIST

December 30, 2025:
A Tesla drives 2,700 miles from L.A. to New York with zero interventions.

FSD v14 works.
10× larger model.
Mixture-of-Experts architecture.
The Physical Turing Test is arguably passed.

The question is no longer:

Can Tesla build it?

It’s:

Will the market wait?

THE BIG PICTURE

• BYD wins the present.
• Tesla bets on the future.

Two empires.
Two philosophies.
A global shift not just in mobility — but in how AI is applied.

SHOW NOTES

Episode Title:
BYD vs Tesla: How Elon Musk Lost the Present — and Might Still Win the Future

Series: AI Drama
Host: Malcolm Werchota

KEY TOPICS

• BYD vs Tesla
• AI as product vs AI as feature
• Andrej Karpathy & vision-only autonomy
• FSD v14 & Physical Turing Test
• God’s Eye & DeepSeek
• Vertical integration
• BYD’s expansion into Europe
• Elon Musk & political backlash

LINKS & CONTACT

Website: https://www.werchota.ai
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmwerchota
Podcast: social@werchota.ai

SEO TAGS

BYD Tesla, Elon Musk AI, autonomous driving, FSD v14, God’s Eye BYD, DeepSeek automotive, EV competition, AI drama, future of mobility, AI strategy