A TrendForce study states that by the end of the third quarter, 4.12 million cars with new types of power plants, including electric vehicles, hybrids and hydrogen vehicles, were sold worldwide. The segment as a whole grew by 19.3% year-on-year, but plug-in hybrids were among the growth leaders with 55.3%, although they were behind purebred electric vehicles in sales volumes.
Image source: BYD
At the end of 2024, TrendForce experts expect that the market for vehicles with new types of power plants will grow by 24.8% to 16.26 million units. Battery electric vehicles were sold in the amount of 2.5 million units in the third quarter, showing an increase of 3.9% year-on-year. BYD, although it is ahead of Tesla in the Chinese electric vehicle market, is still only pretending to be on a global scale, but the gap between them is measured by one percentage point. While Tesla controls 18.5% of the global electric vehicle market, BYD is content with 17.5%. Tellingly, third place is occupied by the SAIC-GM-Wuling joint venture, which specializes in the production of compact, cheap electric vehicles for the Chinese market. It is its strong position in the Chinese market that allows this joint venture to take third place in the world ranking with 7.2%.
Image source: TrendForce
As the authors of the study note, for the first time in the third quarter, the share of battery-powered vehicles in the sales structure of BYD products fell below 40%, and plug-in hybrids demonstrated higher rates of demand growth. Globally, sales of such machines increased by 55.3% to 1.6 million units, with about 80% of this quantity sold on the Chinese market. If you look at the world ranking of the largest manufacturers of plug-in hybrids (PHEV), seven out of ten positions in it are occupied by Chinese brands. BYD leads by a huge margin with 40.1% of the market, startup Li Auto (Lixiang) takes second position with a share of 9.5%, but Huawei-backed brand AITO (Seres) is content with third place and 6.3% of the segment.
What is characteristic is that if the Zeekr brand, owned by the Geely holding, in the ranking of the largest manufacturers of battery electric vehicles occupies only tenth place with 2.2% of the market, then its sister brand Lynk & Co in the segment of rechargeable hybrids settled in fourth with 2.9% of the market and slightly surpassed Mercedes-Benz . By the way, if the ranking of the largest suppliers of electric vehicles is headed by the American Tesla, and Volkswagen takes a respectable fourth place with 4.3% of the market, then in the segment of rechargeable hybrids the only non-Chinese manufacturer in the top five only closes it, and this is Mercedes-Benz with 2.8% of the market . One step lower is the Swedish brand Volvo Cars, owned by the Chinese Geely, with 2.5% of the market, and BMW closes the top ten with 2.2% of the rechargeable hybrid market.