Wang Chuanfu, the driving force behind BYD’s rise. https://www.ft.com/content/22527628-733e-4188-9678-ab3210fdb1ba https://www.ft.com/content/22527628-733e-4188

Wang Chuanfu, the driving force behind BYD’s rise. https://www.ft.com/content/22527628-733e-4188-9678-ab3210fdb1ba https://www.ft.com/content/22527628-733e-4188-9678-ab3210fdb... Excerpt: The story of the professor in nonferrous metals research turned hard-headed executive with a fastidious focus on technology, supply chains and cost- cutting has become gospel in Chinese science and business schools. To his employees, Wang is simply known as “The Chairman”. Both revered and feared, the 57-year-old billionaire’s unassuming demeanour belies a micromanager with a Stakhanovite work ethic. “The work-life balance concept is just not in his lexicon,” Experts attribute BYD’s success largely to a ruthless culture of cost-cutting. The entrepreneur had instituted “absolutely aggressive cost control” BYD has developed its own in-house capabilities. Contracting other companies for hardware or services is a last resort, so much so that an executive once told car reviewers the company made everything on the vehicle “except the tyres and the windscreen”. By splitting manufacturing into “finer and finer steps”, Weber said, individual workers only carry out very narrow tasks. This means there is greater propensity to replace staff with cheap workers. “They basically treat people like robots,”