While Tesla has emphasized the sedan segment of the EV passenger car market with its Model 3, Chinese battery and vehicle maker BYD is racking up huge sales in the China market with its new crossover vehicle, the BYD Yuan EV.
A stylish small crossover vehicle, the Yuan EV had 6,428 deliveries in April, making it number one in EV vehicles sold in China.
The company also had strong sales for its BYD e5, which ranked fourth with 4,602 units, and the BYD PHEV Tang, which was seventh with 3,833 moved.
Tesla’s lone vehicle on the list, the Model 3, just missed the top ten, with an estimated 3,000 units, which would place it in eleventh place.
Making a strong run at BYD’s first place spot is fellow Chinese carmaker Geely, which is headquartered in the city of Hangzhou. The Geely Emgrand EV was in the second spot 5,225 units sold in April.
BYD and Berkshire Hathaway
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway bet on BYD’s potential, purchasing 225 million shares. It’s an investment that has paid off handsomely. Berkshire’s original investment of $230 million has grown in value almost ten-fold, and is now worth roughly $1.96 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
While Tesla focuses on passenger cars, Chinese battery and vehicle maker BYD continues to expand its presence in the United States market through its buses and specialty vehicles.
The company has delivered its first BYD 8R Class 8 Automated Side Loader (ASL) all-electric collection truck to Waste Resources to serve its customers in the City of Carson, California.
The first all-electric refuse truck in residential collection operation in Southern California, it features BYD’s propriety electric-propulsion system designed specifically for refuse collection.
The refuse truck’s cab, chassis, and propulsion system were manufactured by BYD, with an ASL body made by Amrep, a leading manufacturer of waste handling equipment in North America.
Trash hauler Waste Resources currently runs 13 refuse trucks in the city of Carson, and if BYD’s refuse truck meets its service and environmental objectives, the company hopes to convert its entire fleet to BYD all-electric trucks.
BYD and Berkshire Hathaway
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway bet on BYD’s potential, purchasing 225 million shares. It’s an investment that has paid off handsomely. Berkshire’s original investment of $230 million has grown in value almost ten-fold, and is now worth roughly $1.96 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
BYD (Build Your Dreams), a world leader and pioneer in battery and zero-emission vehicles, has debuted a three-section, 27-meter (89-feet) pure electric bus.
The double articulation bus is capable of transporting 250 people at a top-speed of 70 kilometers per hour (43 mph).
“Today, BYD once again uses its core technology, reliable products and innovative solutions to solve the two great urban ills of congestion and pollution,” Stella Li, Senior Vice President of BYD said. “The K12A will bring zero emissions to BRT systems, allowing passengers to enjoy quiet, pollution-free travel, while at the same time saving significant maintenance costs for operators.”
The bus can optimize it efficiency by switching between 2-wheel-drive and 4-wheel-drive.
The K12A is designed for lower-speed, high capacity operations, including airport shuttles and university campus routes where quick loading and high seating capacity are the most important factors.
BYD and Berkshire Hathaway
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway bet on BYD’s potential, purchasing 225 million shares. It’s an investment that has paid off handsomely. Berkshire’s original investment of $230 million has grown in value almost ten-fold, and is now worth roughly $1.96 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
BYD (Build Your Dreams), a world leader and pioneer in battery and zero-emission vehicles, and the Antelope Valley Transit Authority (AVTA) celebrated two milestones: BYD’s 300th battery-electric bus built in Lancaster, California; and AVTA’s 1,000,000th electric service mile running BYD buses.
The AVTA serves the cities of Palmdale, Lancaster and Northern Los Angeles County, California.
Speakers included Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, Palmdale Mayor Steven D. Hofbauer, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, Deputy Consul General, Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Los Angeles, Shi Yuanqiang , and SMART Union Rep Willy Solorzano.
Two messages ran throughout the program: electric buses are good for the environment; and building them locally is great for our communities.
“We are very proud of this 300th American bus milestone. We are passionate about our mission to create a cleaner environment here in North America and across the globe,” said Stella Li, BYD President.
Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris added, “BYD has continuously shown its dedication to our community and region at-large, since establishing its North American manufacturing facilities here in Lancaster,” Parris said. “Along the way, BYD has established itself as the gold standard in the battery electric bus transportation industry. In fact, our local Antelope Valley Transit Authority (AVTA) will very soon have a 100% all-electric bus fleet.”
BYD and Berkshire Hathaway
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway bet on BYD’s potential, purchasing 225 million shares. It’s an investment that has paid off handsomely. Berkshire’s original investment of $230 million has grown in value almost ten-fold, and is now worth roughly $1.96 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Kraft Heinz’s Evolv Ventures, the $100 million venture fund backed by the prepared foods company, has announced GrubMarket as its first investment.
GrubMarket is a platform that sources local food directly from producers and delivers it directly to businesses and consumers. Terms of the agreement were not released.
“We’re excited to invest in GrubMarket, a platform that is disrupting the food wholesale market,” said Steve Sanger, General Partner of Evolv Ventures. “GrubMarket plans to grow its presence and product offerings through both geographic and product expansion. Evolv Ventures is pleased to support its innovative founders.”
Since Evolv Ventures announced the formation of the fund in October 2018, the fund has quickly established itself by hiring an experienced team of investors and entrepreneurs and is actively working and investing with leading companies in the space, such as GrubMarket.
Evolv Ventures Capital Fund invests in emerging tech companies transforming the food industry. The venture fund aims to accelerate Kraft Heinz’s exposure to emerging technologies and businesses and leverage Kraft Heinz’s position in the industry to become the most value-added investor in the space.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past perfo
Berkshire Hathaway’s McLane Company, Inc., a leading supply chain services company providing grocery and foodservice supply chain solutions, has announced that its McLane Foodservice and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen have mutually agreed to end their restaurant distribution relationship, effective July 2019.
McLane has been supplying the southern California, Arizona and southern Nevada geographies for Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen restaurants. While both entities appreciate their long-term relationship, each company believes this move will best serve its financial and operational needs in these geographic markets.
Despite this aspect of their relationship coming to an end, McLane will continue to play a part in Popeyes’s supply chain. KINEXO, a subsidiary of McLane that provides innovative supply chain solutions to respected brands in the foodservice industry, will continue to serve as Popeyes’s exclusive redistribution partner nationwide for numerous items from multiple suppliers used or sold in their restaurant outlets.
Additionally, McLane will continue to serve as a primary distributor to Burger King, which along with Popeyes, is owned by Restaurant Brands International.
One of Warren Buffett’s best deals in recent years was his 2014 financing of Burger King’s acquisition of Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons, which was renamed Restaurant Brands International.
The deal was financed by Berkshire Hathaway, and Berkshire’s role gave the conglomerate ownership and control over 4.18% of the outstanding Common Shares and 14.37% of the total number of votes attached to all outstanding voting shares of the newly created company.
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen became a part of Restaurant Brands in 2017, when it was acquired for $1.8 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
BYD (Build Your Dreams), a world leader and pioneer in battery and zero-emission vehicles, has delivered twenty of its pure electric buses to the city of Guayaquil.
The buses will be operated by private bus operator Saucinc.
The port city, which is known as “the Gateway to the Galapagos,” is swapping its entire fleet of diesel transit buses for pure-electric buses.
The move comes after a five month pilot program proved the viability of the buses. The test bus ran an average of 250 kilometers per day.
BYD’s K9 buses feature air conditioning and Wi-Fi, and will have a dramatic impact on air pollution and fuel costs.
The buses are projected to reduce 12.8 tons of CO2 and 2.9 million gallons of diesel annually.
In addition to the buses, the city already has a fleet of BYD ev taxis in service.
BYD and Berkshire Hathaway
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway bet on BYD’s potential, purchasing 225 million shares. It’s an investment that has paid off handsomely. Berkshire’s original investment of $230 million has grown in value almost ten-fold, and is now worth roughly $1.96 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
China’s BYD, a world leader and pioneer in battery and zero-emission vehicles, has proposed building its SkyRail monorail to ease congestion in one of Los Angeles’s busiest and most congested freeway corridors.
Is this the one proposal that could save Los Angeles billions in construction costs and shave decades off the construction timeline? It just may be.
It’s not just speculation. The idea is already under consideration. BYD’s SkyRail proposal is one of LA Metro’s four new refined concepts for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor.
The goal is to create a high-capacity transit line between the San Fernando Valley and the Westside through the Sepulveda Pass that would move some 100,000 people a day off the I-405 Freeway, which is already ranked as one of the most traveled urban highways in the nation.
According to LA Metro, over 400,000 people currently travel through this area every day to commute to work, school, and other destinations along the freeway and beyond.
LA Metro’s four concepts include three standard rail projects, similar to its current Red Line subway, and would either be underground or a combination of underground and above ground, and BYD’s SkyRail Monorail.
The Sepulveda Transit Corridor project would link San Fernando Valley and LAX, including connections to existing and planned Metro bus and rail lines, including the Orange, Purple, and Expo Lines, and is part of the Measure M expenditure plan, with approximately $5.7 billion for new transit service to connect the San Fernando Valley and the Westside, which is scheduled to open by 2035.
Passed in November 2016, Measure M is a voter approved countywide half-cent sales tax increase, which funds a $120 billion mass transit expansion plan.
Approximately $3.8 billion is already allocated to extend that service from the Westside to LAX with a 2057 opening date.
The Elephant in the Room
With public transit, the two biggest factors are always cost and time of construction. Certainly the biggest factor in LA’s case is cost. The standard heavy rail projects would cost tens of billions.
For example, LA’s currently under construction 9-mile Purple extension of the underground rail system that runs from the current Wilshire/Western station is budgeted at $8.2 billion and will take to decades to build.
The project broke ground in November 2014 and is not scheduled to be fully completed until 2035.
However, unlike a subway, BYD is proposing to build its SKY Rail monorail, which would run in a corridor down the middle of the I-405 freeway, saving billions in tunneling costs and environmental concerns.
SkyRail would be a fully integrated, driverless, state-of-the-art straddle type monorail that is far advanced from the monorails people are familiar with at theme parks such as Disney World and Disneyland.
Most importantly, BYD notes that its SkyRail is only one fifth the cost of a subway, and using BYD’s prefabricated track beams can in some cases mean a construction schedule as short as 2 years. That’s not to say LA’s system would be built that fast, but it certainly wouldn’t take decades.
As a public transit alternative to subways, BYD’s SkyRail delivers numerous benefits, including: capital expenditure 80% lower than subways, a construction period two-thirds shorter than subways, excellent topographic adaptability due to higher climbing ability and smaller turning radius, reduced noise to allow travel through architectural complexes, visual integration into the cityscape thanks to transparent bridges and independent right of way, flexible management to allow for capacity between 10,000 to 30,000 passengers an hour (each way) and a high speed of up to 80km/h.
The company notes that SkyRail is an effective complement to large cities’ subway networks, and BYD already has construction contracts in China for Shenzhen, Shantou, Xi’an, Bengbu, Guang’an, Jilin, Tianjin, and others.
Not Just a Concept
BYD put its first SkyRail in service in 2016 with a 5.4-kilometer trial line that connects BYD’s headquarters in Shenzhen with a nearby high-speed railway station.
BYD has landed contracts to build SkyRails outside of China, as well.
BYD is set to construct its first Latin American monorail in the Brazilian city of Salvador. Construction will commence in 2019 with the goal of being operational by 2021.
Like the LA proposal, the system will integrate with other mass transit. Salvador’s SkyRail will move a projected 15,000 passengers a day, connecting them to the public metro network that currently serves over 2.9 million people.
Will SkyRail be the choice of LA Metro? We will know more in roughly six months, as the 20-month study is expected to conclude by fall 2019.
BYD and Berkshire Hathaway
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway bet on BYD’s potential, purchasing 225 million shares. It’s an investment that has paid off handsomely. Berkshire’s original investment of $230 million has grown in value almost ten-fold, and is now worth roughly $1.96 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, the former hedge fund managers that Warren Buffett hired to manage a portion of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock portfolios, have continued to see their portfolios grow.
Combs was hired in 2010, and Weschler was hired in 2011, and each was initially given a billion dollar portfolio to separately manage. Over the past five years, Buffett has increased their portfolios as he has grown confident in their abilities. The portfolios have now reached $13 billion each, according to Buffett’s recent comment on CNBC.
Berkshire’s total stock holdings total a whopping $183 billion, according to its most recent 13-F filing.
As Warren Buffett’s handpicked protégés, Buffett has praised their success, noting that “They have made Berkshire billions already that we wouldn’t have otherwise made,” he said on CNBC in 2014. “They both have a fundamental combination of soundness and brilliance.”
While Buffett notes that this past year “Overall, they are a tiny bit behind the S&P, each, by almost the same margin,” Buffett acknowledged to Becky Quick on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that they were still doing better than he was.
More than Just Portfolio Managers
In addition to portfolio management, Combs sits on the Boards of companies that Berkshire holds sizable stakes in. Combs is on the Board of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Paytm, and he also is playing a key role in the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and J.P. Morgan Chase healthcare joint venture, having been charged with finding the project’s CEO.
It was also Combs’s belief in aerospace manufacturer Precision Castparts that directly led to Buffett’s $32 billion acquisition of the company.
“You have to give Todd Combs credit for the deal,” Buffett said, noting that he had never heard of the company before Combs brought it to his attention. ”Todd told me a lot about it, and over the last few years I have become familiar with it,” he added.
Another winner was Combs and Weschler’s positions in DirecTV in 2014. The satellite broadcaster’s acquisition by AT&T brought an over $3 billion windfall for Berkshire, as its 4.5 million shares were purchased at roughly half the tender price of $95 per share offered by AT&T.
When the day come that the entire Berkshire portfolio is in Todd Combs and Ted Weschler’s hands, Berkshire’s shareholders will be able to sleep well at night knowing it is well-managed.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
BYD (Build Your Dreams), a world leader and pioneer in battery and zero-emission vehicles, has announced that its year-on-year electric car sales rose almost 300% for the month of January 2019 over January 2018.
BYD’s official number is 292%.
The company sold 28,005 electric cars in China in January, which is its third highest month ever.
The robust sales are in great part due to the continued success of its BYD Yuan, which set its eighth consecutive month of record sales with 10,093 vehicles.
The Yuan ranks #1 in the plug-in electric car segment in China.
BYD and Berkshire Hathaway
In 2008, Berkshire Hathaway bet on BYD’s potential, purchasing 225 million shares. It’s an investment that has paid off handsomely. Berkshire’s original investment of $230 million has grown in value almost ten-fold, and is now worth roughly $1.96 billion.
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
