BYD Co., the world’s largest new energy vehicle manufacturer, paid an average of approximately 147,000 yuan ($21,400) per employee in total compensation during 2025, according to an analysis of the company’s annual report filed with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
The figure — derived from total staff costs equivalent to 15.94% of the company’s 803.97 billion yuan in revenue, divided by a year-end headcount of 869,600 — covers salaries, bonuses, social insurance contributions, housing fund payments, and other statutory benefits.
In 2025, the average compensation rose from the 124,000 yuan reported a year earlier.
It represents the full cost of employing a worker at what was in 2025 the world’s largest EV maker by vehicle sales — surpassing Tesla for the first time.
The labour cost advantage of Chinese-made vehicles has been cited by chief executives of several Western automakers in recent years as a structural barrier to competition.
The advantage extends beyond wages.
The European Commission concluded in its anti-subsidy investigation that Chinese-made battery electric vehicles benefit from state support at multiple levels of the supply chain.
The finding led to countervailing duties of between 7.8% and 35.3% on BEV imports from China, depending on each manufacturer’s level of cooperation with the investigation.
BYD was assigned a duty of 17.0%.
The company is expected to begin production of fully electric vehicles at the Hungarian and Turkish plants later this year, a move that will allow the carmaker to bypass the extra tariffs.
In the same report, the company disclosed the first major job reduction, with nearly 100,000 roles eliminated in 2025 alone.
What the Numbers Show
Glassdoor salary data from March, drawn from thousands of self-reported employee submissions, shows that entry-level manufacturing roles at American EV makers start well above BYD‘s average total compensation per employee.
At Rivian‘s sole manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois, assembly line workers earn between $39,035 and $47,690 per year, based on 430 salary reports.
At Tesla‘s Fremont, California, factory, production associates earn an average of $48,084, based on more than 1,000 reports.
At Lucid‘s plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, manufacturing hourly roles pay between $41,000 and $55,000 per year.
These are the lowest-paid positions at each company.
They are still 1.8 to 2.2 times higher than what BYD pays on average across its entire 869,600-person workforce — a figure that includes not just production workers but also engineers, managers, and corporate staff.
The disparity grows sharply at professional and senior levels. Manufacturing engineers at Rivian earn approximately $127,000.
Software engineers at Lucid average $148,000. Directors at all three companies earn between $345,000 and $418,000 per year, according to Glassdoor.
Company-wide averages — which blend factory floor workers with engineers, software developers, and executives — sit at approximately $112,000 at Rivian and $132,000 at Lucid, according to PayScale data for 2026.
That places the overall compensation gap between BYD and its American competitors at roughly five to six times.
Rivian‘s stock-based compensation alone — $741 million across 15,232 employees in 2025, or approximately $48,600 per worker — exceeds BYD‘s entire average compensation per employee by more than two to one.
Cost of Living
The comparison requires context.
The cost of living in Shenzhen, where BYD is headquartered, or in the lower-tier Chinese cities where most of its factories operate, is a fraction of what workers face in Fremont, California, or Casa Grande, Arizona. a
Housing, food, healthcare, and transportation are all substantially cheaper.
A monthly salary of 6,000 to 8,000 yuan ($870 to $1,160) — the median range for BYD production workers, according to an analysis by Chinese financial outlet iFeng — represents a meaningful income in the small cities where BYD deliberately locates its auto plants.
BYD is often the dominant employer in these communities, and Chairman Wang Chuanfu has framed the company’s hiring strategy as a social mission that raises living standards in economically disadvantaged areas.
But the cost-of-living gap does not fully explain the compensation gap.
Even adjusting for purchasing power parity — which the World Bank estimated at roughly 3.5 to 1 between the United States and China in 2024 — BYD‘s labour costs remain significantly below those of its American competitors on an adjusted basis.
The Competitive Complaint
The labour cost disparity has become a central grievance for US automakers that do not manufacture in China.
Peter Rawlinson, who served as Lucid’s chief executive until being pushed out in February 2025, was among the most vocal.
In an interview covered by EV in June 2024, Rawlinson criticised the structural advantages enjoyed by Chinese automakers.
“I really believe, first of all, in a free market economy. But I think we do need to recognize that there isn’t a level playing field,” he said.
He specifically cited China’s lower labour rates as a factor making it “difficult for Western companies to compete on cost.”
Lucid’s interim chief executive Marc Winterhoff has been equally direct.
In recent comments on Chinese EV cost structures he stated: “It’s also highly subsidized, a lot of overcapacity. That’s actually why you can get from – even from suppliers very good prices right now, but we’re not there.”
Last month, amid the Bank of America investor presentation he added that Lucid’s bill-of-materials costs are already “on a lower BOM cost than the Chinese competitor that everybody is so afraid of when they come in globally.”
Rivian founder and chief executive RJ Scaringe has made similar arguments in earnings calls. “We’ve taken lots of cars apart, every car manufacturer does,” he said.
Both EV makers went public in 2021 and are among the largest cash burners within the industry.
“There’s not something magical when you take it apart that’s allowing these really impressive cost structures. There’s no secret magic thing that you’re like, ‘Oh, aha, they did this.’ But rather it’s the compounding benefits of a lower cost of capital,” Scaringe said late last year.
Ford chief executive Jim Farley has voiced similar concerns despite having praised Xiaomi’s debut model — the SU7 sedan.
During the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call held last February he asked: “How will the Chinese change the game with all of these in terms of pricing power, given the overly competitive, subsidized reality?”
The complaint is sharpest among companies that manufacture exclusively in Western markets.
Rivian builds all of its vehicles at a single plant in Normal, Illinois, where the state’s $827 million incentive package requires production workers to be paid at least 120% of the average wage in McLean County — currently approximately $44,300 per year, or roughly $21 per hour.
That wage floor alone exceeds BYD‘s company-wide average by more than two to one.
Lucid manufactures at its AMP-1 plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, and assembles the vehicles aimed at local customers at a smaller facility in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi plant is on track to begin full production by the year end, the management recently said.
Tesla’s Different Position
Unlike Rivian and Lucid, Tesla manufactures in China — and benefits directly from the same cost structure that its competitors cite as an unfair advantage.
Tesla‘s Shanghai Gigafactory, where more than 20,000 workers produce roughly half of the company’s global output, operates with base salaries for junior workers of approximately 5,340 yuan ($777) per month, according to Reuters.
However, the figures are exactly three years old.
Elon Musk has praised Chinese work culture multiple times rather than criticising the cost gap.
In a May 2022 interview with the Financial Times, the Tesla chief executive contrasted Chinese and American workers directly.
“There’s just a lot of super talented and hardworking people in China that strongly believe in manufacturing,” he said. “They won’t just be burning the midnight oil. They’ll be burning the 3 a.m. oil.”
Shanghai is Tesla‘s most efficient Gigafactory, serving not just China — the world’s largest EV market — but also exporting to Europe, Southeast Asia, and other regions.
The Automation Variable
The labour cost advantage may be evolving.
BYD‘s 2025 annual report revealed that the company reduced its workforce by approximately 100,000 employees — from 968,900 to roughly 870,000 — even as vehicle sales rose to 4.6 million units.
The reductions were concentrated on production lines, where industrial robots are displacing assembly workers.
Capital expenditure on fixed assets exceeded 150 billion yuan ($20.6 billion) in 2025.
Despite the headcount reduction, total cash paid to employees actually increased in 2025 — meaning average compensation per head rose even as the workforce shrank.
The cuts fell disproportionately on lower-paid production roles.
Revenue Per Employee
A different lens on the gap emerges from revenue productivity.
BYD generated approximately 924,500 yuan ($134,200) in revenue per employee in 2025 while Tesla generated approximately $703,500.
Rivian posted $353,700, while Lucid trailed at $150,400.
For the two EV makers which went public in 2021, the low revenue-per-employee figures reflect the punishing economics of pre-scale manufacturing: large workforces producing small volumes at high unit cost.
Until these companies reach the production volumes needed to amortise their fixed costs, they will remain structurally uncompetitive against Chinese rivals on a per-unit labour basis.
The Arithmetic
The five-to-one labour cost gap between BYD and its American competitors is not the only factor driving Chinese EV competitiveness.
Significantly faster internal procedures, vertical integration, state subsidies, cheaper raw materials, and a domestic supply chain that concentrates battery, motor, and semiconductor production within a few hundred kilometres of final assembly all contribute.
But labour remains the most visible and politically charged dimension.
Even with European Union tariffs of up to 17% on BYD imports, and Canadian and American duties of 100%, the underlying cost structure remains difficult for most Western manufacturers that do not produce in China to match.
