Welcome to the Halftime Show.

A robot barista made my matcha this morning. Then I paid with my palm. 2026 is here - and what a time to be alive.

Let's lock in.

BYD sold 2.26 million battery electric vehicles in 2025. Tesla sold 1.63 million. For the first time, a Chinese automaker is the world's largest seller of EVs.

But founder Wang Chuanfu didn’t seem as stoked. Things are rough at home right now.

→ BYD outsold Tesla globally in pure EVs in 2025: 2.26M vs 1.63M. Tesla recorded its 2nd consecutive year of declining deliveries, down 8.6% to its worst annual total since 2022. BYD became the world's largest EV maker even though its cars are not available in the US market. (CNN Business)

→ But BYD's domestic market share fell. Geely's NEV sales surged 81.3% year on year. Leapmotor nearly doubled. Xiaomi exceeded its 350,000 unit delivery target in its first full year. (CNN Business)

→ BYD's overseas sales hit a record 133,172 in December alone: up 133% year on year. As the domestic price war tightens, BYD is pivoting hard to intl markets. Full year overseas sales > 1 million units for the first time. Very obvious that BYD's 2026 story will be written outside China. (CarNewsChina)

→  A Smartphone company recorded 50,212 EV sales in December:  a monthly record, after entering the market just 18 months ago. No automotive heritage. 410,000 EV deliveries in its first full year. CEO Lei Jun has now set a 550,000 unit target for 2026. (CNBC)

→ Xi Jinping's New Year's Eve address singled out AI models and chip breakthroughs as national achievements. "China has become one of the world's fastest rising economies in terms of innovative capacity," he said in a televised address on December 31st: the most upbeat New Year's speech in recent years, citing humanoid robots, drones, and semiconductor progress alongside EVs. (Fortune)

The scoreboard and the locker room are telling different stories. And that’s a good thing?

BYD sold 4.6 million vehicles in 2025. Outsold Tesla in pure EVs for the first time in history. Posted 133% overseas sales growth in December alone. By every external metric, it’s at the top of its game.

And yet Wang Chuanfu stood in front of investors and publicly admitted that BYD's technological lead had eroded. Competitors narrowed the gap fast enough that price discounting alone couldn't hold domestic share.

That's a significant admission. BYD built its dominance on two things: vertical integration and relentless cost pressure. If competitors can now match cost without the vertical integration, the moat thins.

What's actually happening is consolidation in slow motion. Over 400 EV brands launched and failed since 2018. The survivors: Geely, Leapmotor, Xiaomi, NIO, are all in a dog fight over a market where 59% of new cars sold are already electric. The growth era is over. The survival round has begun.

Good news is, the companies that come out of this round will be battle tested in ways no competitor from ANY other vertical can replicate. Every cost efficiency, every product iteration, every software update, stress-tested in the most competitive car market on earth.

This is what it looks like when a championship team reviews the film and protects its dynasty. I like it.