Tesla simply buys battery cells from Panasonic and CATL and calls itself an innovation company.
Panasonic has sold its entire stake in longstanding battery partner Tesla for about ¥400bn ($3.6bn)
Tesla simply has Siemens build factories for it, assembles parts, and calls itself a manufacturing company.
Musk called the Siemens chief and said, “I want to build electric cars, but have no idea how to do it.” There were many problems with the ramp-up of the factories, because Musk did not even know how to help himself.
Tesla simply suppresses death, fire and crash data, and treats safety failures as PR problems rather than engineering problems.
All in all, Tesla has turned out to be the worst car company in history, with numbers of unnecessary and predictable deaths in the hundreds that continue to rise.
To understand the significance of the Tesla fraud, let’s rewind to when Musk in 2011 laughed nervously on camera when a reporter asked him about BYD as a competitor. It was just like when Blackberry laughed at the iPhone. The reporter foolishly let him off the hook, unable to press him to a real explanation. Why was he so scared he burst out laughing? Why did he keep laughing when she tried to ask for reasons?
Today we see BYD, unlike Tesla, dominates the market with real innovation and real engineers. They manufacture their own cells, motors, chips, and software. And most notably, they have progressed significantly while Tesla has not at all. You could buy a 2012 and a 2026 Tesla and wonder what changed if anything.
BYD said on Thursday that sales of its battery-powered cars rose nearly 28% to 2.26 million units in 2025. Vehicle deliveries at Tesla dropped 8% year on year to 1.64 million vehicles delivered in 2025.
BYD had a fatal battery fire in 2012. But BYD admitted the failure was theirs, and spent eight years engineering it completely out of the physics. Their cells don’t burn now. Tesla had fires starting in 2011 and by comparison did nothing. They have since had hundreds of battery fires and Autopilot fatalities. They responded only with a fog of PR, NDAs, and data suppression. Tesla cells burn dangerously sudden and hot and everyone knows it.
Total Tesla Fires as of 4/4/2026: 232 confirmed cases.
Fatalities Involving a Tesla Car Fire Count: 83
The BYD battery nail test is the difference made visible. The NMC chemistry Tesla uses detonates like a bomb on puncture and occupants are burned to death. BYD’s LFP Blade Battery does NOT burn. That’s not a marketing claim. That’s the physical property of the cell. Tesla can’t pass the test.
This is because of two completely different institutional responses to killing people with a product. Wang Chuanfu lost sleep, pulled his engineers together, and demanded they reproduce the failure mechanism until they understood it completely. Musk slept like a baby, increased his social media ranting, played video games, laughed at journalists and just kept shipping cars that predictably crash and catch fire.
In fact, when news hit that a BYD in Hong Kong caught fire, an investigation found it was NOT CAUSED BY BYD. That’s how rare BYD fires have become. It’s an amazing thing to report, compared with the hundreds of Tesla fire cases open and unresolved despite their fatalities.
The new Chinese legislation (July 1, 2026) legally mandates “no fire and no explosion” for batteries. Tesla becomes illegal, as it always should have been.
Without fraud, there would be no Tesla:
| Category | Tesla | BYD | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top Speed | ~261 km/h (Plaid) | 496.22 km/h (U9 Xtreme, Papenburg 2025) | BYD |
| Hypercar Status | Roadster 2.0 promised 2017, still a demo car, production pushed to 2027 | Shipping 3,000 hp hypercars that jump, float, and dance | BYD |
| Safety Ranking | Dead last in 2026 TÜV Report. Model Y failure rate 17.3%, worst in its age group in over a decade | Top tier Euro NCAP. LFP chemistry stable by design | BYD |
| Fire Record | 232 confirmed fires, 83 fire fatalities. Volatile NMC chemistry, aging packs, no engineering fix | Blade Battery passes nail penetration test. Fires so rare a single Hong Kong incident made international news | BYD |
| Range Honesty | “Range Diversion Team” rigged dashboard algorithms. DOJ probe. 30-40% real-world shortfall on highway | Consistent real-world performance matching advertised range | BYD |
| Battery Cells | Bought from Panasonic and CATL. Panasonic sold its entire Tesla stake for ¥400bn | Designed, manufactured, and tested in-house | BYD |
| Factories | Called Siemens to build them. “I want to build electric cars, but have no idea how to do it” | Vertically integrated. Own chips, motors, software, production lines | BYD |