BYD very famously invested in high end manufacturing equipment early on in it's history. But, in trying to maintain, upgrade, and expand the equipment alongside increased production demand, the senior managers discovered that this was significantly more expensive than just hiring and training more local machinists to build the cars manually.

They ended up downsizing their automated team and hiring/training a huge number of skilled professionals. This allowed the company to grow far more rapidly, while still implementing new changes to their models with minimal re-engineering of their production floor.

Now, BYD is one of the largest car markets in the world, and they are slowing moving back to re-automate jobs that have become consistent and routine.