Just five years ago, BYD posted its third straight decline in annual sales. The 530,000 cars it sold in 2018 dropped to 470,000 in 2019 and then to 430,000 in 2020.

Last year, the Chinese company’s sales topped 4.2 million to make it the sixth largest car-making group in the world and the third best-selling brand.

Its ultimate goal, says executive vice-president Stella Li, is to become the world’s biggest car maker.

“Do your maths,” she says with a smile after I ask when BYD hopes that will happen.

Li expects BYD’s progress in Europe to be slower than in less mature markets, recognising that it needs to “build trust” here and offer a more rounded package by “spending time on residual values and interest rates”, as “we need a strong offering and to build a financial infrastructure”.

BYD is increasingly making some extraordinary statements, but it typically has the numbers to back them up. It employees 120,000 engineers across 11 research institutes, making on average 45 patents per day, to now total more than 59,000 patents. It’s growing everywhere and in every way: model range, dealer network, factory network. 

The development time for BYD models sits at just 18 months – a timeframe that no ‘legacy’ car maker can get close to, and it doesn’t appear to be cutting corners. 

One senior aftersales boss at a major dealer group told me that their technicians had remarked that BYD cars were the better built and of higher quality than any other manufacturer’s.

“Dealers are saying their aftersales aren’t very busy and warranty claims are very low,” adds BYD’s UK country manager, Bono Ge.

“We have plenty of cars with Uber [taxi] drivers, and they’re the first to find faults, but there are no warranty or quality issues so far.”

Could BYD offer a longer warranty than its standard six years? “We don’t want to be too aggressive,” answers Li. 

BYD is targeting success in all areas of the market, including at the very top. With BYD as the mainstream brand, it has created two other brands for export: Yangwang and Denza.

I ask Li if Yangwang has similar positioning to what Jaguar has in mind, but she says “Jaguar is lower than Yangwang” and the BYD brand is “more premium than that... Yangwang is like Ferrari, a hypercar”. 

She adds that Denza is a Porsche rival, positioned above the likes of Audi. 

In China, “luxury is being defined by technology” according to Li, so when it creates an electric hypercar that can jump and dance (Google it…), it’s seen as the market leader. 

“Before, all luxury was imported [to China]. Now the technology revolution has changed that.”

So is Ferrari worried about BYD? “No, I don’t think so,” says Li. Should they be? “It’s too early to be a threat to them. They don’t need to worry [now]: we’re too young. Maybe some day…”