Howard Yu, writing at Inc. on the culture of BYD, China’s largest EV maker, as set by its founder and CEO, Wang Chuanfu:

When defective cells appeared, Wang asked: “Have you found the root cause?” If yes: “Can you reproduce it?” Then the demand: “Make one hundred cells with exactly the same defect. If you can reproduce the failure one hundred times, identically, then and only then have you understood the mechanism.”

That practice, reproducing failure on purpose until the physics revealed itself, became the bedrock of BYD’s entire operation.

Most companies operationalize their successes. How many operationalize their failures? I can’t help but recognize some Apple DNA in BYD.

BYD did not decide one morning to build the fastest car on Earth. First, it built phone batteries. Then E-bike packs. Bus systems. Delivery vans. Passenger cars. Hypercars. Each rung taught something the previous rung could not. There was no quantum leap. Only the next rung.

And Wang’s deepest insight had nothing to do with batteries. It was about knowledge. If you cannot reproduce a defect one hundred times, identically, you do not understand the mechanism. Do not settle for a plausible explanation. Demand a reproducible one. The difference between the two is the difference between an organization that keeps making the same mistake and one that never makes the same mistake twice.

On a trip last year to Mexico City, BYD cars and dealerships were everywhere. The company has about a 70% market share in Mexico. Globally, it’s almost 20%—and zero percent of that is in the U.S.

The high quality and low pricing of BYD vehicles put U.S. and European cars to shame. If they were to ever come to our shores, the American EV market would just shrivel up. Good thing the Trump and Biden administrations put the kibosh on that.