Automotive News Europe — 2025-01-01
Automotive Industry
BYD Co. enjoyed a year-end surge to push total sales to 4.25 m passenger vehicles last year, narrowing its gap with Tesla Inc. as the two vie for the crown of top-selling electric-vehicle maker of 2024.
The Shenzhen-based carmaker, which stopped making vehicles entirely powered by fossil fuels in 2022, hit a new monthly sales record in December, spurred by subsidies and extra consumer incentives.
BYD sold 509,440 plug-in hybrid and pure-electric passenger vehicles in December, the company said on 1 January 2025. The figure includes 207,734 EVs, taking the annual tally of battery-powered car sales to 1.76 m. Overall annual sales increased 41%.
The rise of BYD as a bestselling car brand stands in contrast to the turmoil facing a growing number of legacy auto giants like Nissan Motor Co., Volkswagen Group and Stellantis NV. Western car brands have faced tumbling sales in China, while also lagging behind on the EV transition.
Tesla will release fourth-quarter sales figures later this week. The company needs to deliver at least 515,000 EVs in the final three months of 2024 to meet its guidance for “slight growth” in annual sales, or 1.81 m deliveries, which would be a quarterly record for the company. Analyst estimates are for 510,400 deliveries, just shy of Tesla’s expectations.
BYD has trailed Tesla in quarterly sales this year. By the third quarter, BYD had sold 1.16 m EVs, lagging Tesla by 124,100. However, the Chinese best-seller has seen a last-quarter surge to narrow the gap with its US rival.
Based on BYD’s December results, it will fall just shy of surpassing Tesla in annual sales. It has only topped Tesla once — on a quarterly basis in the final three months of 2023.
New milestones
BYD’s surge will help cement its place among the top-selling carmakers globally. Its rise in total sales puts it close to beating Ford Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. on an annual basis too. Higher sales will tip the company’s annual revenue over $100 bn for the first time.
BYD’s gains have been fueled by domestic Chinese sales — and aided in the second half of the year by increased subsidies to convince drivers to ditch gasoline cars.
Its target to sell roughly half-a-million vehicles outside China has fallen short of expectations in the face of pushback from the European Union, which has imposed additional tariffs on Chinese EVs.
In Brazil, one of its biggest overseas markets, BYD is under scrutiny over allegations of slave-like conditions for some construction workers building a new EV factory.