BYD doubles EV sales in March as it chases down Tesla to be world’s biggest

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD has released its March figures showing continued staggering growth in EV sales, confirming its position as the world’s second biggest EV manufacturer and gaining rapidly on global leader Tesla..

March is a generally slow month for car sales globally, but BYD has revealed that its sales of fully electric vehicles are almost double the number of March 2022, leaping to 102,670 in the month of March.

BEVs make up around 50% of BYDs total production with hybrid vehicles making up the remainder, however the BEV share of BYD’s production is expected to grow as consumers move away from hybrids.

The BYD numbers mean that its total for the first quarter is more than 260,000, gaining rapidly on Tesla, which has also released its Q1 global production numbers of 440,808 vehicles in the first three months of the year, a 44 per cent increase year-on-year.

BYD March EV sales in China. Source: CNEVPost

Electric vehicle sales grow in China while ICE vehicles plummet

While many ICE vehicle manufacturers like Toyota are yet to release their sales numbers for March, petrol and diesel car sales have been plummeting in key markets. Nowhere more so than the world’s largest car market China.

EV manufacturers BYD and Tesla have experienced huge growth in China and globally, legacy automotive brands from the all the big automotive manufacturing nations were down significantly in the first two months of the year.

Japanese brands, which are dominated by the world’s largest car maker Toyota, are down 40% year-on-year in China. German brands, which are dominated by the world’s second largest automaker VW, are down 21%.

US brands including Ford and GM were down 12.5% however this figure would have looked a lot worse without Tesla.

We could be witnessing a significant tipping point in the world’s transition to EVs as thousands of dealerships in China are stuck with potentially millions of petrol and diesel cars they’ll never be able to sell.

EV market share in Norway is already around 90%, because Norway is a relatively small country and because of its proximity to the large European market, we haven’t witnessed a “stranded asset” used vehicle scenario there because the European second hand petrol and diesel car market can easily absorb used cars ICE that won’t sell in Norway. For now anyway.

This is not the case for China. As the world’s largest car market there’s really nowhere for the overflow of excess ICE inventory to go.

The ICE vehicle inventory crisis in China could mark the tipping point for the global shift to EVs as ICE vehicle manufacturers realise they must now drastically scale back production of petrol and diesel cars in the face of exponential growth in EV market share.

With huge growth rates in battery and EV production as well as the looming introduction of new vehicle pollution standards in China, the coming months may mark the beginning of a sharp decline for legacy auto makers.

It’s going to be fascinating to watch.