Photo: BYD
Chinese automaker BYD far outperformed Tesla last year with the help of its affordable electric cars. According to the South China Morning Post, BYD is now the world’s largest EV maker, but only when you factor in sales of all-electric and plug-in hybrid models.
That’s not to say that BYD’s all-electric cars aren’t catching on in China, thus undermining EVs from foreign and domestic competitors, including Tesla and NIO. BYD’s all-electric cars are steadily gaining sales, mainly in the home market; In 2022, BYD sold over 911,000 electric vehicles and more than 946,000 PHEVs worldwide for a total of more than 1.86 million, as reported by Inside EVs.
And the company is enjoying a surge in popularity despite the recent pandemic lockdowns in China impacting car sales. In fact, the SCMP says pandemic issues are more or less related to BYD’s sales because people want cheaper cars:
Booming sales from the automaker to taxi fleets and budget-conscious households underscore how layoffs in China’s tech industry and the pandemic-hit economy are pushing buyers towards cheaper, locally-made electric vehicles rather than imported models or foreign brands like Tesla.
Meanwhile, Tesla has sold over 1.3 million all-electric cars worldwide — Elon Musk’s EV company doesn’t disclose specific numbers for China alone — which is ahead of BYD’s EV numbers by over 400,000 cars but lags behind BYD’s numbers overall.
That technically makes BYD the largest EV maker in the world, but the catch is that it’s not the simple comparison implied by naming BYD the “world’s largest EV maker,” given that competitor Tesla doesn’t have plug-in sold in hybrids.
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Nevertheless, BYD is emerging as an electric vehicle manufacturer that will play a major role in the global electric vehicle market, both directly and indirectly. BYD also makes batteries and counts Tesla among its buyers. So you can see the appeal of a cheaper electric vehicle that may not have the same amenities as other cars but has the same batteries. According to the SMCP, this makes an electric car more affordable:
Most BYD models cost between 100,000 yuan and 200,000 yuan ($29,000), a bargain compared to Tesla and other competitors like Nio and Xpeng, whose tech-rich models each sell for more than 300,000 yuan.
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“Electric vehicles priced under 200,000 yuan are popular with employees because they want to save money,” said Tian Maowei, sales manager at Yiyou Auto Service in Shanghai. “In the domestic market, BYD’s electric and plug-in hybrid cars are easy to sell because they are equipped with high-performance batteries that are believed to be as good as those of premium automakers.”
BYD actually started out as a battery manufacturer, which has given it a head start in making electric vehicles. The company’s “blade lithium iron phosphate battery packs” are a household name in China. These are reportedly more energy dense and resistant to overheating, and BYD uses these batteries in its EVs and PHEVs.
With good battery packs and a lower price tag, it’s no wonder BYD is selling more cars overall than its competitors — more than a third of the 6.4 million so-called “new energy vehicles” that will be sold in China in 2022. Tesla is still the all-electric king for now, but BYD shows that could change soon.
Photo: BYD