More than a million employees: the crazy rise of a Chinese giant that surpasses the automobile industry

If BYD has recently seen its sales decline globally, the Chinese giant is not reversing course on hiring. 150,000 people have joined the ranks of the manufacturer over the last 10 months, allowing it to exceed one million employees.

This is an infinite game in which BYD took part: like many brands, the Chinese giant seeks to be the world number one automobile manufacturer by all means possible and imaginable. And these great ambitions are not without merit since the manufacturer already has an impressive number of models in its catalog. Beyond its sprawling range, it is also its little hands that actively contribute to its success.

According to BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu, his brand recently hit a new hiring record with nearly 150,000 people joining its ranks in just 10 months. Since it employed around 869,600 people at the end of 2025, it has officially exceeded one million employees. Nearly 960,000 of them work in China while another 60,000 are employed abroad.

Of the lot, 120,000 are engineers responsible for research and development. Their fields mainly concern battery cells, electromotors, electronic controls and semiconductors. This fully explains the monstrous strike force of BYD, which is capable of multiplying models on a whim. In addition to innovation, it is the production process that has also allowed the brand to rise.

Wang explains in particular that it is thanks to the mastery of the internal production of batteries, chips and electrical blocks that BYD has gone from a simple battery manufacturer to a major player in vehicles on a global level. And apart from a drop of around 99,000 positions observed in 2025, the Chinese brand has continued to record increased hiring since 2022, when it had “only” 570,100 employees.

With 1.02 million people today, BYD surpasses all other automobile groups in this area. Volkswagen comes in second place with 663,000 employees while Toyota closes the podium with 391,000 people. Stellantis comes in fourth with 259,000 employees, followed by the 195,000 people working for Honda. Ford and General Motors are in a pinch with 169,000 and 156,000 employees respectively.

Tesla occupies eighth place in the ranking with 135,000 people. It is therefore clear that BYD is putting historic manufacturers in gear. That said, the Chinese company sells far fewer vehicles per capita than its competitors, with 5.3 cars sold per person in 2025. This is much less than Volkswagen and Tesla, which respectively rise to 12.1 and 13.5 vehicles sold per employee. Toyota absolutely explodes the scores with 29 models per person.

Machine-translated from French