BYD has only just missed out on the title of the world’s largest electric car manufacturer. With 1.76 million electric cars, the Chinese manufacturer is closing in on Tesla – but if you include plug-in hybrids, BYD is already far ahead of the US manufacturer.
As a reminder, Tesla announced that it sold 1,789,226 electric vehicles in 2024 – the first time in the company’s history that deliveries were below the previous year’s result. With a strong final quarter (over 495,000 deliveries), Tesla was almost able to make up for the weaker start to the year.
BYD also experienced a pronounced dip in sales in January and February 2024. Still, the Chinese manufacturer achieved a very good annual result with seven consecutive record months. We initially only looked at BYD’s battery-electric cars to compare BYD with Tesla.
The Chinese market leader sold 207,734 electric cars in December 2024, an increase of 8.9 per cent compared to the same month last year. It is BYD’s best monthly result ever for all-electric cars, exceeding the 200,000 mark for the first time. As a reminder, BYD only achieved six-digit BEV sales for the first time in October 2022.
BYD has 595,413 BEVs on its balance sheet for the fourth quarter (+13.1%), which is around 100,000 units more than Tesla. For the year as a whole, BYD sold 1,764,992 BEVs. If the current momentum continues, BYD should overtake Tesla in the current year.
However, it must be mentioned that BYD no longer achieves the majority of its sales with battery-electric cars, but with plug-in hybrids. In the passenger car segment, it sold 307,706 PHEVs in December (+101.9%). Although PHEV sales have been falling slightly since October, they are still at more than 300,000 units per month – which is why BYD delivered 918,556 vehicles in the fourth quarter when including plug-in hybrids in the tally (+120.7%).
In addition to the 1.76 million battery-electric cars, BYD delivered 2,485,738 PHEVs. The company’s passenger car division thus sold a whopping 4.25 million cars in 2024, an increase of 41.1 per cent on the previous year. While Tesla’s previous annual growth target of around 50 per cent has been written off for a while now, BYD’s growth is close to this level.
Let’s take a look at commercial vehicles. However, here, BYD does not differentiate between BEVs and PHEVs and only reports how many ‘New Energy Vehicles’ (NEV) were sold. The company achieved an exceptional result here in December: The 5,369 NEV commercial vehicles represent an increase of 91.7 per cent on the previous record from November 2024, and compared to December 2023, it is even 520 per cent more. The extremely strong December also drives up the quarterly result. 10,301 NEVs represent an increase of 384 per cent over the year. That means almost half of all BYD commercial vehicles in 2024 (21,775 units) were sold in the final quarter.
That brings BYD’s total annual sales to 4.27 million vehicles when all classes and drive types are added together. With 4.25 million cars, BYD is roughly on par with established manufacturers such as Ford and Honda. China remains by far the most important market for BYD, but overseas countries are also slowly becoming more relevant: In 2024, over 417,000 BYD were sold outside of China, an increase of 71.9 per cent.
