No, having a title of ownership is not the same as registering as a street legal vehicle. BYD cars don’t meet DOT Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards which is a deal breaker, regardless of which state you’re in. Even if you could get it registered, insurance would be impossible.
My state lets you register hand built and other oddball vehicles - basically, if you can get it past customs, you can register it. The out of state inspection for a title transfer is to check the VIN.
Insurance would need to be from a specialty provider who do insure oddball vehicles. Someone I know (in CA no less) insured his homemade electric motorcycle this way. (It’s titled as the chassis of the BMW regular motorcycle it was built from.)
If you’re pulled over, you would need to show things like seat belts or turn signals and so on. I got nailed for not having a shoulder belt in a homemade vehicle made after 1960. Seat belt ticket was my punishment, although the cop remarked that adding a shoulder belt would be a good idea.
You have to show you built it though. A stock BYD would probably not count, I'm not sure how much change you would need though to get it to count as homemade.
I think a chassis is the deciding factor, since you can shove modern components in 50+ year old chassis and build street legal hotrods. You register it as that old chassis model from whatever manufacturer built it.
As I understand BYD use less components than the other traditional car manufacturers (more brains/integration in axle vs having lots of CAN connected shit around the car) so in theory I could see builders installing a BYD drivetrain into an old chassis the same way people can do LS swaps into Miatas.
The difference in vehicle regulations between the EU and US are not along a linear scale of rigor. They have different requirements for different things. They are different opinions of what “safe” even means.
They probably just haven't done it yet since it's a self certification where the manufacturer themselves runs tests following NHTSA test procedures. Importers won't import (and probably can't sell in many jurisdictions) without that self-certification and it's likely just not worth it for BYD right now with the 100% tariff.
I wouldn't be surprised if they've already designed the core components of their cars (like the chassis) that they sell in Europe to meet American standards anyway. Stuff like the height and orientation of headlights can be modified more cheaply later when they want to enter the US market.
