The development and production of electric vehicles is an extremely risky business from a financial point of view. For example, Tesla reported its first profit only in 2020, twelve years after it began producing electric cars.
It is not surprising that last year in the world only four companies focused on the production of electric vehicles were able to show a profit. This is evidenced by a study by Rho Motion, a company specializing in statistics on the electric vehicle market.
The financial indicators of each company are taken from open sources, including Bloomberg, with the main parameter being the operating margin. As a result, it turned out that Tesla is in first place with a margin of 7.2%. However, the Chinese giant BYD is not far behind: it has an indicator of 6.4%.
In addition, while Tesla's margin decreased in 2024, BYD's showed growth. If this trend continues, this year the Chinese concern will take first place in profitability among all electric vehicle companies.
The third and fourth places are also held by automakers from China - Li Auto and the Seres conglomerate with the Aito and Landian brands controlled by it. Moreover, Seres was in the black for the first time. There are still no other profitable players in the electric vehicle market in the world.
The closest to profitability is the Zeekr brand, owned by the Geely holding company (margin -8.5%). Chinese companies Leapmotor (-10%), Xpeng (-17%) and Nio (-34%). Given that they have all significantly reduced their costs, they may soon please shareholders with profits.
But even such indicators would be considered lucky for Lucid, Vinfast, Rivian and Polestar, which are at the bottom of the list. The worst performance was achieved by the American company Lucid: the operating margin in 2024 is minus 374%.
And in 2023 the company was even worse (minus 500%), but the current figure is hardly an achievement. Lucid is kept afloat only by abundant financial infusions from investment funds of Saudi Arabia.
The study did not consider European brands, because they sell both electric and ICE cars, and the profit of all of them without exception comes from cars with internal combustion engines.