BYD's SkyRail: $1B and a decade later, monorails rust in Anyang and Guilin

SkyRail is the straddle monorail transit system BYD, the Shenzhen EV and battery giant, marketed to Chinese and overseas cities from 2016.

Cities would buy BYD monorails — a fifth of subway cost per km and a third of the build time — to cut congestion and carbon

Nearly US$1 billion spent and more than 1,000 engineers assigned since the 2016 launch

BYD launched SkyRail in 2016 as green transportation for the future; founder Wang Chuanfu said in a 2017 interview it could be deployed in more than 200 Chinese cities, a market worth trillions of yuan.

BYD was in talks about seven years ago to introduce SkyRail and the smaller SkyShuttle in about 20 cities; construction began in Shenzhen, Shantou and Xi'an. In 2021 Beijing suspended approvals and set revenue, output and population thresholds — Bengbu finished most of a 5.7km test line but was not permitted to operate.

Most SkyRail and SkyShuttle ventures ended abandoned, with half-dismantled stations rusting in Anyang and Guilin. Salvador, Brazil cancelled its deal in 2023; lines at BYD's Shenzhen HQ, Xi'an and Yinchuan still run.

The customer was city governments, and in 2021 Beijing cut off the funding: approvals froze and the new thresholds excluded cities like Bengbu that had already built.

Cost advantage could not survive the freeze — "we have sufficient data to prove that we are right," Wang said in 2021 as authorities were beginning to pause projects.

The bet now competes with BYD's core: cash flow strained by an extended EV price war and softness in the car division raises questions about funding a transit side business.

A supplier-pushed infrastructure bet lives or dies with its customers' balance sheets: when local governments ran out of money, a fifth-of-subway cost was still not cheap enough.

BYD's latest annual report, released in March 2025, says the company is continuing to innovate the technology. Sao Paulo's Line 17 is scheduled to start operation in 2026. The bull case for persistence is BYD's own history — early backer Charlie Munger called its sail into cars with zero experience "a damn miracle".