Since being overtaken by BYD as China’s biggest automaker by sales in February, Volkswagen’s market share has continued to sag. The fight between the two Goliaths of Chinese auto sales reflects a wider trend in the market.
As Bloomberg reports, BYD sold 595,300 plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles in Q2, increasing its overall market share to 11.2 percent, according to data from the China Automotive Technology and Research Center. By comparison, VW sold 544,000 vehicles in total, with just 23,433 being fully electric.
Once the biggest automaker in China by a wide margin, VW now controls around 10 percent of the market. While that still makes it the second-largest brand by sales, it is a far cry from the roughly 15 percent of the market that VW controlled between 2008 and 2020.
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As domestic brands like BYD and Changan have grown, the fortunes of foreign brands have turned. One of the reasons for that is the increasingly sophisticated and affordable EVs by local carmakers. For example, BYD introduced the Seagull earlier this year, a hatchback with around 190 miles (306 km) of range that costs 73,800 yuan ($10,345 USD at current exchange rates).
By contrast, VW and other foreign automakers have struggled with a relative lack of electric vehicles to offer customers. Even Tesla, which only sells EVs, is behind BYD in both the overall and the electric markets.
Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in China jumped by 25 percent in June to 736,000 units. That means that electrified vehicles accounted for roughly two out of every five cars sold in the market.
