BYD has published its full sales results for the 2022 calendar year and it is quickly closing in on Tesla as the world’s largest manufacturer and seller of EVs.
Last year, the Chinese car manufacturer sold 911,410 battery-electric vehicles, an extraordinary 184 percent increase from the number of BEVs it sold in 2021. When factoring all of the plug-in hybrid vehicles that BYD also sold, it managed to sell 1,868,543 cars, a 214.7 percent increase from the previous year.
Tesla still holds the crown as the world’s largest producer of battery-electric vehicles, selling a record 1,313,851 units throughout 2022. However, Tesla’s sales ‘only’ grew by 40 percent compared to the 184 percent of BYD. If the Chinese car manufacturer keeps up this momentum, it has the potential to overtake Tesla as the EV leader this year.
The majority of vehicles sold by BYD are priced between 100,000 Yuan ($14,490) and 200,000 Yuan (~$29,000), making them considerably cheaper than alternatives sold by Tesla and fellow Chinese companies such as Nio and Xpeng.
Read: Tesla Delivered A Record 405,000 Vehicles In Q4 And 1.3 Million In 2022
“EVs priced below 200,000 yuan are popular among white-collar consumers because they want to save money,” sales manager at Yiyou Auto Service in Shanghai, Tian Maowei told South China Morning Post. “In the domestic market, BYD’s electric and plug-in hybrid cars are easy to sell because they are fitted with high-performance batteries believed to be as good as those used by the premium carmakers.”
BYD’s sales are particularly impressive when you consider that much of China was under strict Covid-19 lockdowns for much as 2022 due to the government’s zero-Covid policy.
A forecast by the China Passenger Car Association suggests that the growth of EV deliveries in China may slow to 30 percent in 2023 having more than doubled in 2022 because cash subsidies are being slowly phased out.
