BYD’s $10,000 electric car overtakes Tesla Model Y and all other cars in popularity in China

The success of BYD products in China’s domestic electric vehicle market is explained both by the scale of production, which provides significant savings in unit costs, and by the desire for vertical integration. BYD, for example, supplies itself with traction batteries, second only to CATL in this area. This allows BYD’s budget electric cars to outpace all other cars in China in popularity.

Image source: BYD

At least, as CarNewsChina reports, at the end of November, the most popular passenger car on the Chinese market was the BYD Seagull electric hatchback, which can be purchased here for the equivalent of $10,000. For the fifth month in a row, the share of hybrids and electric vehicles in the Chinese market exceeds the sales structure 50%; at the end of November it was 52.3%. According to the results of last month, 1.268 million units of hybrids and electric vehicles were sold in China, which is one and a half times more than last year’s result. At the same time, 1.155 million passenger cars with internal combustion engines were sold, 7% less than in November last year.

In the model standings, so to speak, the BYD Seagull electric hatchback became the sales leader in the Chinese market for the second time in a year. It came out on top in August, but Tesla’s activity in promoting Model Y crossovers allowed the localized car to regain the crown in September. In November, Tesla was able to sell no more than 44,576 Model Y crossovers in China, which is 10.63% less than last year’s result. By the end of November, BYD Seagull sold 56,156 pieces in China, which is 38.34% more than the same month last year. By the way, BYD electric cars also took third and fourth places: the Song Plus model with 40,265 units sold (+15.36%) and BYD Qin Plus, respectively, with 36,787 cars sold (-3.33%).

The first car with an internal combustion engine, the Nissan Sylphy, appears only in seventh place on the list of November bestsellers on the Chinese market. The previous six positions in ascending order were occupied by electric vehicles, although BYD offers some models in a hybrid version. The presence of Volkswagen models with internal combustion engines in the top twenty, namely Lavida, Passat and Sagitar, is largely a tribute to the past achievements of the European concern in the Chinese market, for which models were actively localized with the participation of local partners. BYD intends to sell 4.25 million electric vehicles and hybrids by the end of this year, and the company will no longer produce cars exclusively with internal combustion engines since 2022.