That is the conclusion of new research by financial analysts BestBrokers. The firm gathered financial data on the 200 largest public companies in the world by market capitalization, including revenue and net income. These annual figures were then divided by total headcount, and the companies were ranked accordingly. In addition, BestBrokers estimated how quickly each company generates $1 million in net income.

Of those 200 companies, only three are automotive OEMs: Toyota, Tesla and BYD.

Toyota is the most efficient of the three, generating $83,834 in profit per worker and $845,146 in revenue per worker. This places it well ahead of both Tesla and BYD in productivity, despite being the oldest manufacturer in the group. Toyota also earns $1 million in net profit roughly every 17 minutes, reflecting its highly optimized global manufacturing system and decades of incremental improvements.

However, the more intriguing comparison is between Tesla and BYD, where two different business models collide.

Among the 200 companies analyzed by BestBrokers, Tesla ranks in the middle. It generates $28,149 profit per employee and $703,543 revenue per employee, showing relatively strong output per worker. BYD ranks last by a wide margin, earning just $5,346 in profit per employee and $131,756 revenue per employee, reflecting a far more labor-intensive and scale-driven operating model with lower per-worker productivity.

On the other hand, Tesla is the slowest of the three in terms of generating profit, taking about 138 minutes to generate $1 million in profit, which is more than eight times longer than Toyota. BYD sits in between, generating $1 million in approximately 113 minutes, or about seven times slower than Toyota. Despite BYD’s massive scale and Tesla’s high valuation, Toyota remains significantly ahead in the speed at which it converts work into profit.

Tesla operates as a high-margin, capital-efficient manufacturer, where smaller output is offset by stronger per-unit economics and higher monetization per employee. On the other hand, BYD relies on extreme scale, with nearly 6.5 times more employees than Tesla, allowing it to generate substantial total profits despite much lower efficiency per worker. As a result, Tesla leads decisively in productivity metrics, while BYD only overtakes it in raw speed of profit generation due to its workforce size advantage rather than operational efficiency.

“The rivalry between Tesla and BYD has increasingly shifted from pure delivery competition to a split between profitability strength and scale dominance,” says Alan Goldberg, lead data analyst at BestBrokers. “Tesla continues to post strong demand momentum, including a 39.4 percent rise in Chinese-made EV sales in May, but its $1.5 trillion valuation remains heavily reliant on expectations around autonomy and AI rather than current automotive fundamentals.

BYD generates $1 million in profit every 113 minutes. That’s faster than Tesla, but much slower than Toyota. Photo courtesy BYD

“BYD, meanwhile, is reinforcing its position as the new global EV sales leader, expanding exports across Europe and emerging markets while aggressively pushing battery and ultra-fast charging technologies to strengthen its cost and infrastructure advantage.

“Overall, Tesla is being priced as a high-margin, future-technology platform with strong brand demand, but slower relative scale growth, while BYD is increasingly operating as the dominant mass-market EV manufacturer, competing on volume, cost efficiency, and rapid international expansion rather than valuation multiples or per-employee profitability.”

Which business model do you think is best?