The title is misleading; according to the article, BYD is a major battery manufacturer. They also bought a car company cheap and made it profitable. Now their car making branch is working together with the battery branch to make electric cars. If electric cars flop, they can still be profitable on batteries and regular gas-burning cars. I'm sure Buffett hasn't lost so much of his mind that he doesn't appreciate a no-lose situation.
He makes mistakes, Conoco Phillips certainly was not the first and wont be the last. One could say his first mistake was investing in Berkshire itself.
And he's not afraid to publicly admit his fault and accept blame for those mistakes. Rather refreshing, compared to the CEO comments in most of the other annual reports I've read.
I don't like that BYD seems to be dependent on cheap labor to be competitive; hopefully that will be a short term situation.
He seemingly lost his mind with his investment in Concoco Phillips.
I hope electric cars do well too, but this is another lapse in judgment.