BYD vying with Tesla to be world’s best-selling EV brand after record 2024
Chinese EV maker reported record sales despite rising tariffs
A bumper December helped Chinese automotive giant BYD to reach a total of 4,272,145 electrified vehicle sales for 2024, putting it firmly on track to become the best-selling electric car brand in the world.
All-electric vehicles represented 41.5 per cent of BYD total sales with 1.7m BEVs sold and hybrids securing the rest. Vying with BYD is Tesla, which will reveal its 2024 sales figures in the first quarter of 2025. Tesla delivered 1.8m pure-EVs in 2023, though the American firm was 2.3 per cent down on this figure after nine months in 2024.
BYD’s 2024 sales are up a whopping 41.3 per cent compared with 2023, and in each of the final three months of the year, the firm secured more than 500,000 sales. BYD’s figures are a combination of passenger cars and commercial vehicles – for example, more than 1,800 BYD buses are already in service here in the UK. Around 90 per cent of BYD’s global sales come from China, where it places ahead of Volkswagen, Toyota and Honda. The Chinese car market is expected to sit just below 30 million sales for 2024. Global car sales are forecast to reach around 88 million units for 2024 – roughly 1.7 per cent up on 2023.
To compete with BYD’s success (and that of other Chinese firms) Honda and Nissan recently announced plans for a merger. Combined, the two Japanese companies' car sales would total seven million.
Chinese car firms such as BYD have faced pushback from markets including Europe, where the EU confirmed tariffs of 35 per cent on imported vehicles from China, on top of an existing 10 per cent import duty. Meanwhile, the United States and Canada have imposed a 100 per cent duty on EVs from China. However, the UK has decided against implementing the same tariffs as the EU on BYD’s electric cars, because the firm has built a factory in Turkey, and so avoids any import duty.
BYD has faced some other issues in recent weeks, with more than 160 workers rescued from ‘slavery’ conditions from its plant in Brazil – the largest overseas market for BYD. According to the Public Ministry of Labor in Brazil, workers had to deal with ‘poor hygiene conditions’, plus passports and salaries being ‘withheld’. The factory was scheduled to be functional by March this year.
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