PARIS: Jerry, 34, grows cucumbers in Rotterdam and was familiar with China’s largest electric-vehicle maker from the family business using its commercial trucks.
Next week, he and his wife Jessica, 33, take delivery of a black BYD Tang, having been won over by a test drive in the seven-seat SUV that gets from zero to 100kph in 4.6 seconds.
If there were any doubts left that the company known for landing a major investment from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has arrived on the world stage, the handover of keys to the Bentvelsens and BYD’s other European customers during this week’s Paris motor show put them to rest.
The world’s third-most-valuable automaker - behind Tesla and Toyota, and ahead of newly public Porsche - looks to be the frontrunner among Chinese challengers that roughly matched up with the number of western brands in attendance.
And BYD is doing more than just putting on a good show.
It’s drawing interest from governments in central and southern Europe that are eager to land investment from the company, which is contemplating manufacturing cars locally as relationships between China and western countries that are threatened by its rise turn increasingly fraught.
The Tang.
"Some of the countries are very detailed,” Michael Shu, general manager and managing director of BYD Europe, said of offers it’s getting to help address the company’s needs for labour, land, energy, construction and an ecosystem of nearby suppliers.
"Even in China, we don’t have such a kind of investing in the service.”
Carmakers led by Stellantis, Europe’s second-largest, are on edge about the friendly reception their potential disruptors are getting on their home turf.
"Chinese manufacturers are welcomed in Europe with a red carpet,” Carlos Tavares, CEO of the Jeep, Peugeot and Fiat maker, told reporters here.
"It's not like this that we're welcomed in China.”
"It's disturbing,” said Laurens van den Acker, director of design for Renault group.
"I root for Europe. I want it to be us taking the leadership. Chinese carmakers have an advantage over us, and the Chinese government has been betting on the EVs for 15 years.”
Other automakers have fared better having made bargains decades ago in China, agreeing to set up compulsory joint ventures with domestic manufacturers to share in what was a jaw-dropping period of meteoric growth.
Some of those western companies, including Volkswagen and General Motors, built massive positions in the market that have started to deteriorate the last few years, as local players field attractive electric models.
"The competitive intensity is increasing,” Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kallenius said in an interview.
"It's the most fun time to work in automotive since 1886,” he added, referring to the year Carl Benz rolled out the first car powered by a gas engine. "It's also the most uncertain time."
While some governments are offering a helping hand, President Emmanuel Macron is prepared to play defence. His government is preparing a measure to subsidize EVs only if they're made in France, or at least in Europe.
The policy, which appears to take a page from the Inflation Reduction Act recently signed into law in the US, may only make it more likely that China’s most well-off auto companies look to manufacture in Europe.
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On top of BYD, this could include Great Wall Motor, whose small Ora Funky Cat EV with retro looks to live up to its name was among the models the company is staging here.
Great Wall is about to start building electric MINI hatchbacks with BMW in China.
A next step could be to make cars together at MINI’s home plant just outside Oxford, England, which will cease making electric Minis for at least the next several years.
Whether by leveraging partnerships with companies consumers know, or in BYD’s case, an existing presence in commercial vehicles and buses, China’s automakers look poised as ever to overcome the qualms European car buyers have had in the past about making a big-ticket purchase from a new entrant.
"We know BYD,” Jerry Bentvelsen said, when asked whether he had any second thoughts about becoming one of the first in the Netherlands to take delivery of the company’s cars.
"I don’t have reservations.”
