BYD reaches record sales in June as BEV sales dip

Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD once again achieved record sales of vehicles with alternative drive systems in June. However, while fewer all-electric vehicles were sold than in May, BYD's plug-in hybrids achieved a new record.

In June, BYD sold a total of 341,658 new energy vehicles ( battery electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles and plug-in hybrids). This means that the manufacturer even narrowly beat the previous record from December 2023 (341,043 vehicles). BYD sales have now recovered from the slump around the turn of the year (just after the previous December record).

Compared to the previous month – 331,817 BYDs were sold in May 2024 – sales rose slightly by three per cent. Over the year as a whole, growth is significantly higher: based on the 253,046 vehicles sold in June 2023, BYD has even increased by 35 per cent. These are only battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrids. BYD does not have fuel cell cars in its range and the last pure combustion vehicles were built in 2022.

The vast majority of BYD sales in June were passenger cars – 340,211 of the 341,658 BYD vehicles sold were cars and 1,447 were commercial vehicles. The growth in passenger cars was (unsurprisingly) very close to the overall growth, while commercial vehicles grew by 6.3 per cent for the year and by 8.9 per cent compared to May.

However, there has been a slight shift in drive types: For a long time, sales of plug-in hybrids and battery electric cars roughly balanced each other out. In June, however, BEV sales were almost constant (-0.8 per cent), while PHEV sales increased by 5.9 per cent – for plug-in hybrids it was the fourth record month in a row with 195,032 vehicles. BYD sold 145,179 units with battery-electric drive systems.

Incidentally, the majority of BYD vehicles continued to be sold in China. In June, 26,995 vehicles went to overseas markets, which from a Chinese perspective also includes Europe. This represents a 156 per cent increase in exports for the year as a whole – although exports fell by 28 per cent compared to May.

On a quarterly basis, BYD sold 986,720 New Energy Vehicles in Q2 and thus only just missed the million mark. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, this represents growth of just over 40 per cent. At the weak start to 2024, BYD was even able to increase sales by 57.5 per cent.

cnevpost.com, reuters.com, cnevpost.com (sales breakdown)