Wang Chuanfu

Wang Chuanfu was born on April 8, 1966 in Wuwei County, Anhui, into a farming family and lost both parents as a teenager. He studied chemistry at Central South University and earned a master's degree at the Beijing General Research Institute for Nonferrous Metals, where he later worked on battery research.

Wang Chuanfu founded BYD in Shenzhen in 1995 with his cousin Lu Xiangyang to make rechargeable batteries for mobile phones. Unable to afford the automated lines used by Japanese makers such as Sanyo and Sony, he split battery production into manual steps handled by low-cost workers, which let BYD undercut rivals and win customers including Motorola and Nokia. In 2003, against the wishes of many investors, he bought Xi'an Qinchuan Automobile to enter the car business, betting that battery know-how would matter in cars. BYD launched the first mass-produced plug-in hybrid, the F3DM, in 2008, the same year Berkshire Hathaway bought about 10% of the company; Charlie Munger later compared Wang to a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch. Under Wang, BYD launched the Blade Battery in 2020, stopped making combustion-only cars in 2022 and became the world's largest battery EV seller in 2025. He still presents major technology launches himself, including Blade Battery 2.0 in March 2026, and was reconfirmed as chairman in September 2026.