BYD aims to achieve 50 per cent of its sales outside China by 2030

China's leading electric car manufacturer BYD is reportedly aiming to sell half of its vehicles abroad by 2030. Last year, the foreign share was only around ten per cent, but is now set to grow rapidly, while overall sales are also set to increase further.

If BYD’s plan works out, the company would be on a par with Western car manufacturers such as VW, Toyota, Stellantis and GM on the global market. BYD is already dominating its home market, where it overtook VW last year. This was achieved exclusively with electric cars and plug-in hybrids, as BYD has already discontinued the production of pure combustion models in 2022.

Growth is to be fuelled by expansion in Europe and Latin America, as the US market has been ruled out. The US raised import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 100 per cent while the Biden administration was still in power and banned connected cars from China, which has already basically made it impossible to import BYD vehicles. Under the Trump administration, tariffs of 145 per cent currently apply to all Chinese imports, including plug-in hybrids.

In March, it was announced that BYD intends to increase its foreign sales to 800,000 vehicles this year. That would be almost twice as many as the 417,204 vehicles that BYD sold abroad last year, which only accounted for around ten per cent of total sales of 4.27 million electric cars and plug-in hybrids.

In order to grow quickly outside of China, BYD is also focusing on the localisation of production, and had already embarked on this path well before the current tariff conflicts between China and the EU and the USA. BYD had already announced its first European plant in Hungary at the end of 2023, with production due to start at the end of 2025. The second European factory in Turkey is scheduled to go into operation at the end of 2026. And BYD is reportedly considering a third European plant and European battery production. There will also be factories in Thailand, Uzbekistan and Brazil.

According to Reuters, BYD executives are said to have outlined the 2030 target to investors at the end of last year, emphasising expansion in Europe as crucial to achieving the goal, the news agency reports, citing an insider who was present at the talks as a source.

Even though BYD wants to sell half of its vehicles outside its home market of China for the first time by 2030 at the latest, no specific sales targets have yet been announced for that year. After BYD was able to increase its sales last year by a staggering 90 per cent compared to 2023, reaching 4.27 million vehicles, the company is aiming for 5.5 million units this year, according to Reuters. That would be an increase of 29 per cent compared to 2024 and therefore a significantly slower pace of growth. Accordingly, it is almost impossible to predict how high total sales will be in 2030, and it is therefore almost impossible to draw any conclusions for the foreign market.

reuters.com