Fully-electric vehicles (BEVs) were 8.1% of all U.S. light vehicle sales in 2024. EV sales were up 15% year-over-year.

The CEO is worried about how hostile the U.S. market might be for Chinese companies, not about low demand.

China hit 50% of all new cars sold last summer. Mexico 8.2% of their cars were EVs last year and had 70% growth. US doesn't have an EV market, once the EV credits get pulled, bottom is going to fall out.

In 2024, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) made up 25% of new car sales in China (to compare apples to apples.)

That's a lot more than the US, but that's not the point. 8% is plenty large enough to be sizable market.

EV credits going away will dampen that, but that will also be partly or even fully offset just by how fast that segment is growing.

“BYD doesn’t want to sell in the US” (I presume due to strong anti-China sentiment which would harm an industry that is closely regulated by the government) is very different from “the US doesn’t have a large market for EVs” especially when the EVs BYD makes are low cost. And with Musk close with the government, BYD would be unlikely to be treated well any time soon. It makes sense that the CEO says “it is very complicated” but that is not the same as “the market is small”.

That doesn't say that demand is low, but that adoption is slowing, which could reflect many factors, including high prices.

Are they high? Average price paid in 2024 for a new car was $50k. There are tons of EVs under that price from Tesla model 3/y, For Mach E,Hyundai Ionic, a bunch of KIA models, VW ID4 etc.

The auto industry in general appears to be slowing world wide