I’m a software engineer, not a hardware engineer, but let me guess anyway: the article will imply that they’ve found some magical way to be more “efficient”, but it’s actually that they treat their people like shit and also sacrifice quality. Am I right?

I was going to say "because they're probably state subsidized" but your suggestion is better

Edit: looks like you're right lol

The urgent pace is baked into BYD’s structure. Taking advantage of China’s lower labor costs, BYD deploys about 900,000 employees, nearly as many as the combined workforces of Toyota and Volkswagen, to accelerate design and manufacturing. At its headquarters, BYD promotes a work-focused life through company-subsidized housing, transportation and schools.

They also combine that with skimping on quality ( admittedly a low bar these days, when even daimler uses cheap chinese interior plastic

Chinese engineers have essentially concluded that global industry-standard vetting processes are a wasteful pursuit of “excessive quality,” Han said.

Instead, Chinese automakers release good-enough vehicles quickly, with far fewer prototypes and a fail-fast philosophy mirroring Silicon Valley tech startups, industry executives and experts said.

This sentence makes no sense though:

The problem: The car had been designed for China’s smooth streets and slower speeds. Now, it had to withstand Europe’s winding, bumpy roads.

It's almost as if this was a propaganda article.

Wang spends many nights in Shenzhen employee housing, eats simple meals and works long days, sometimes in a BYD uniform, two BYD investors and others who know him told Reuters. Unlike many Chinese executives, who are chauffeured around, he often drives himself

I got it - they're quoting directly, that's why it reads like propaganda.

State subsidies and a huge protected home market.
But to be fair, they really made the most of it. So absolutely also talent.

Their point about the streets may actually be valid. I don’t know anything about the roads in China, but many European cities are notoriously hostile to automobiles.

It was just a really strange comment. I mean yeah, road quality varies wildly ( jyst come to eastern europe if you wanna see some remarkable road craters ) but its a broad generalization and the quality surely it varies in china as well, no? I keep trying to imagine what roads were these vehicles designed for if "european" roads prompted a redesign.

State subsidies, massive domestic market, stealing IP from Tesla, centralised manufacturing hubs, no environmental regulations or labour laws.

You left out “Uyghur slave labor”.