Warren Buffet Invests In Chinese Automaker BYD, Will They Be The Wave Of The Future?

Warren Buffet Invests In Chinese Automaker BYD, Will They Be The Wave Of The Future?
Warren Buffett is famous for his rules of investing: When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact. You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will. And perhaps most famously, Never invest in a business you cannot understand.

So when Buffett's friend and longtime partner in Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, suggested early last year that they invest in BYD, an obscure Chinese battery, mobile phone, and electric car company, one might have predicted Buffett would cite rule No. 3 above. He is, after all, a man who shunned the booming U.S. tech industry during the 1990s.

But Buffett, who is 78, was intrigued by Munger's description of the entrepreneur behind BYD, a man named Wang Chuan-Fu, whom he had met through a mutual friend. "This guy," Munger tells Fortune, "is a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch - something like Edison in solving technical problems, and something like Welch in getting done what he needs to do. I have never seen anything like it."


2009 New York Auto Show Photo Gallery

If you want to see your photos running on our homepage photo ticker, 
be sure to upload your photos on the go by sending them to Mobile@AutoSpies.com

There are photos and then there are AutoSpies.com photos!

AutoSpies.com is ranked number one on Google search for auto shows


Read Article

laurentlaurent - 4/13/2009 3:51:45 PM
0 Boost
Maybe that way they will be able to get their proper design, not just photocopies...


WorldofLuxuryWorldofLuxury - 4/13/2009 3:55:16 PM
+2 Boost
So are they planning to spend a heck lot of money on awesome cars at awesomely low prices...and be patient and see a rise in profits in memory of Buffet many years later?

I'm sure Buffet would like to have that on his resume.
Money money money!!! So darn important!


topneurotopneuro - 4/13/2009 4:10:40 PM
+2 Boost
The car is not a concept it can be bought in China today for ~$22K.

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2009/04/10/fortune.buffett.byd.fortune/


CarboyCarboy - 4/13/2009 6:59:20 PM
+4 Boost
Didn't the CEO of that company drink battery fluid to prove their battery fluids are actually that clean in their hybrids?


CarboyCarboy - 4/13/2009 7:00:00 PM
+2 Boost
I pressed the link and he did!


wooodwoood - 4/14/2009 1:22:32 AM
+3 Boost
The reason he invested in this Chinese company is because their share price and the company's worth has nowhere to go but up as compared to US companies whose shares are bloated and executive salaries are humongous. The entrepreneur of BYD solves technical problems and gets everything done himself just like most asian entrepreneurs, definitely costs less. He's a one man army of sorts.


Type707Type707 - 4/14/2009 10:31:04 PM
+1 Boost
Think of the multiple sweat shops in China...life is good.


roundwegoroundwego - 4/15/2009 10:14:59 AM
+1 Boost
China is one giant sweatshop. sending olympic athletes to that putrid dirty country was a mistake.


Copyright 2026 AutoSpies.com, LLC