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BYD sales fell by their biggest amount in five years in February as the Tesla rival’s pivot to export markets failed to offset slowing growth at home.
The world’s biggest electric vehicle maker reported February sales dropped 41 per cent year on year to 190,190. The decline was driven by a 65 per cent drop in domestic sales and came despite export sales surging 50 per cent.
The February sales data, which was released by the company on Sunday evening, marked the sixth straight month of declines for BYD. The slump has highlighted the need for Chinese carmakers to increase sales abroad as EV growth moderates at home following years of rapid expansion.
Even when accounting for the weeklong lunar new year holiday — which shifts between January and February every year and usually depresses production and consumption — BYD’s combined sales for the first two months of the year fell 36 per cent, with declines across both the group’s battery-only and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The figure may have been exacerbated by a longer holiday this year.
The hit to sales is a striking change from years of mostly uninterrupted growth. The group notched annual sales of 4.6mn vehicles last year, 10 times higher than its 427,000 units in 2020.
BYD is now under pressure from domestic rivals, including privately owned Geely and Stellantis partner Leapmotor, and has suffered from Beijing’s campaign against unfair supplier treatment and below-cost pricing.
Against that backdrop, the group is aggressively expanding its overseas distribution and production network, including factories in Uzbekistan, Thailand, Brazil, Hungary and Turkey. HSBC analysts have forecast overseas sales will jump a further 60 per cent in 2026 and 25 per cent in 2027 to reach 2mn cars next year.
BYD’s mainland-traded shares rose more than 8 per cent on Monday following US-Israeli strikes on Iran at the weekend as investors bet higher oil prices would boost demand for EVs. Prior to the rally, shares were down 8.6 per cent for 2026.
In the short term, BYD is expected to try to spark a domestic turnaround with the release of new models and battery technology this month.
As China’s carmakers contend with slowing EV growth and the collapse of domestic petrol car sales, analysts have forecast a rapid expansion of Chinese exports. This is expected to heap pressure on legacy manufacturing bases in parts of Europe, south-east Asia and Latin America.
American automotive executives are now on edge over the possibility that the US could soon have cut-throat competition with Chinese rivals after President Donald Trump said in January he would “love” if Chinese companies built cars in America.
Additional reporting by William Sandlund in San Francisco and Nian Liu in Beijing