Buffett-Backed Shark Coming for Tesla Cybertrucks and Rivian R1Ts, and It's Better

Investing

Published: February 7, 2025 8:43 am

24/7 Wall St. Key Points:

With its Shark pickup truck, BYD (BYDDF) has overtaken Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) as the biggest EV manufacturer worldwide.
U.S. automakers, especially Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), face growing pressure in foreign markets.
Early BYD investor Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.B) kept a sizable but modest share
Also: while EV stocks are getting crushed, The Next Nvidia stocks continue to soar. Click here to learn more about the most exciting stocks of 2025.

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Transcript:

[00:00:04] Doug McIntyre: BYD, which is now the largest, EV company in the world. They just passed Tesla in December. they’ve come into the pickup market, with something called the shark. Yeah. They have now the pickup market is really the bread and butter of American car companies, period. I mean, about 38% of Ford sales are F-Series, F-150 gas powered cars that been the best selling vehicle in the US for 45 years.

[00:00:34] Doug McIntyre: Chevy sells a ton. Silverado Ram, right? Right. Ram is the only good product that Stellantis (NYSE: STLA) has here now. They’re not going to come into the United States because the tariffs are so high, but to some extent they don’t have to win there. So what have you heard about where BYD is winning and maybe the shark is winning?

[00:00:57] Doug McIntyre: Well,

[00:00:57] Lee Jackson: the interesting thing is, is that apparently, and this is, I read this recently that they’re selling like hotcakes in Australia, in Brazil. In Mexico, you know, the Chinese aren’t stupid. They know that I would think, I would suspect, and I don’t know this for a fact, that the pickup truck is a lot bigger outside of China than it is inside.

[00:01:22] Lee Jackson: And I could be wrong. Could be, but, but I don’t know. But, but like you said, a, a good pickup truck that is EV is gonna have a lot of appeal in some places. And apparently in those three, places, they’re doing extremely well.

[00:01:38] Doug McIntyre: The other thing is, is that Ford does sell pickups outside the United States. So what it means is, is in the markets that you’ve just mentioned, BYD can’t get it forward in the United States, but they certainly can rain on their parade in some of these other countries.

[00:01:55] Doug McIntyre: You know, is the really big profits for the U. S. car companies and VW have started to sunset in China because the EVs have basically eaten them alive there. They need to do well in some of these mid sized countries, or their international numbers just turned a mush.

[00:02:16] Lee Jackson: Absolutely. You, you couldn’t be more close to the truth because the thing that I find really interesting is that the Chinese, they are our ultimate enemy, and they will never sell one here, but they will move them into Mexico and they will probably try to move them into Canada as well, because you can buy one there and drive it in here, because while there’s a tariff on buying one here, there’s not a tariff to drive one in unless they do that. I guess they could always say, hey, if you buy one and you try to register it in the United States, you’ll be tariffed. But again, around the world, especially in places like Europe where, where even though EV sales are plummeted, they’re still real big on it.

[00:02:59] Lee Jackson: I read that Norway, you know, which population of about, you know, Dallas is going to be all electric soon. So, you know, maybe in Scandinavian companies, countries, they’ll care. But, but if you are in Australia or in Mexico or in Brazil, there’s some big populations there.

[00:03:17] Doug McIntyre: Yeah, no, look, Norway’s 90 percent EVs right now, but as you said, it’s, it’s tiny.

[00:03:21] Doug McIntyre: But this is another example, just going to Warren Buffett, which I go as often as I can, because every time I turn around, you know, it used to be Coca Cola (NYSE: KO) and then it was Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GSBD), and then it was Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), and he made money on all this stuff. He got into BYD early. Yeah. I don’t know if you should look at Berkshire Hathaway as a proxy for owning BYD.

[00:03:44] Doug McIntyre: I don’t, I don’t know, but the fact is, it is more proof of his genius.

[00:03:49] Lee Jackson: Yeah. I would suspect it was one of his lieutenants that pointed it out to him because I don’t think that he’s probably a Chinese EV. Maybe, but he’s still, he took the advice. Yeah. I think he trimmed some, he’s owned it for four or five years.

[00:04:06] Lee Jackson: I think he trimmed some of it. But I still think he has a pretty decent position in it, especially compared to other, money managers. I’m sure they, monkey see monkey do with him all the time. So I’m sure other money managers own it. But, he saw it pretty early on and that’s because he’s the smartest guy that we’ve seen in our generation and or in the last 50 years So yeah, if you want to own byd the way to do it is to buy some berkshire b because it’s in there