Four years ago, the BYD Company promoted the electric battery technology it was developing as a way to help China transform the automobile. No less an investor than Warren E. Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, boasted about the company’s prospects and bought a 10 percent stake. But recently, nothing has gone right. BYD’s stock is down 43 percent from its high on Feb. 8 as investors and analysts have questioned whether the company has the technology or the manufacturing quality to be an enduring competitor in the Chinese market. BYD’s sales of gasoline-powered cars, the company’s commercial mainstay, have wilted this spring as Chinese buyers have moved toward more expensive but better-quality cars from its rivals. At the same time, BYD now accepts that the future of the auto industry is more likely to lie in hybrid gasoline-electric cars, a technology in which it lags Japanese manufacturers, and not in all-electric cars, which still face issues of battery range and recharging time.

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