Wang Chuanfu, the Founder of Byd who challenges the competitors with the recharge in 5 minutes (after overtaking on Tesla)

It is considered the « king of the batteries » and the news that byd’s electric cars can be recharged in five minutes confirms it. Wang Chuanfu, the Chinese entrepreneur who convinced Omaha Oracle, Warren Buffett, to invest 232 million dollars in his bydacronym of Build Your Dreams (« Build your dreams »), is the anti-Elon Musk. Born in 1966 in the Eastern province of Anhui, Wang is part of that generation of entrepreneurs who have benefited from the turning point of Deng Xiaoping, who allowed the dragon to leave each other centuries of backwardness and isolation and become a global superpower.

Who is the founder of Byd

Wang Chuanfu graduated in Chimica-Physics from the Central South University of Technology in Changsha and has a doctorate in metallurgy. It therefore falls within that dynasty of managers who have achieved a degree in scientific disciplines (engineering, mathematics, physics or natural sciences), of which the high ranks of the Chinese power centers are populated. A very distant world, at least apparently, from that of the engineers in jeans and t-shirts of the Silicon Valley. The entrepreneur founded Byd in the middle of the years. Using his academic training in chemistry and metallurgy, Wang has started producing lithium batteries and other components for cell phones of large groups such as Nokia and Motorola.

From batteries for mobile phones to electric cars

A few years later he had the intuition to transfer that same technology to the automotive technology. He bought a state producer of vehicles in liquidation to replace the engines of the Cars with large batteries. From there he started his race to become the first seller of electric vehicles in the world. Last year Byd passed Tesla in sales. However, in net profits and in capitalization the Chinese company still remains very far from the group led by Elon Musk.

Difficulties abroad

In this period, as the Financial Times In an article, The group led by Wang Chuanfu is facing three crises in three different countries. His project to create a production plant in Mexico The opposition of both the Mexican government and the Chinese government is arousing. Beijing, in fact, would have postponed the approval of the project fearing that from Mexico the know-how received by the Chinese can be transferred to the United States. While in Hungary The byd plant, essential to unlock the European market, ended up in the sights of the European Commission. And in Brazil The construction site of an byd factory was closed, because workers lived in slavery conditions.

The challenge of the ultra -fast charging

These difficulties, in the eyes of the investors, seem to pass almost in the background in the face of Monday’s announcement, when byd presented a New ultra -fast charging system capable of adding 400 kilometers of autonomy to an electric car in just five minutes. The mode, called Super E-Platform, allows you to load the batteries at a maximum speed of a megawatt, double compared to the 500 Kilowatt (KW) guaranteed by Tesla’s more V4 supercarticators, whose launch is scheduled for the end of the year. The new byd charging system represents such a disruptive novelty for the world of electric car that could be mistaken of competition and guarantee the Chinese giant a difficult leadership to be equal. However, strong doubts remain that the byd business model can also work outside the Chinese borders. As the three cases mentioned previously, in Europe but also in South America, show, Wang must deal with more articulated supply chains, higher standards on work and environment and the absence of that continuous injection of subsidies guaranteed by Beijing.