China’s electric car manufacturer BYD sees 189.6 per cent sales jump

The Shenzhen-based company said its sales of NEVs, including purely electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, surged 189.6 per cent year on year to 32,800 units in May.

In the January-May period, BYD sold 113,213 NEVs, up 143.4 per cent year on year.

“There are three critical technologies for EVs -batteries, intelligent networking and intelligent driving, and China basically leads the US in the first two sectors,” Mei Songlin, a Shanghai-based veteran auto analyst, told the Global Times. 

The edge comes from an early start, China’s sheer market size, and an early-commercialised 5G network, according to Mei.

For example, in the niche sector of human-machine interaction – a system that includes voice instruction, navigation and entertainment – US automakers are behind Chinese competitors by about three to five years, Feng Shiming, a car analyst said.

“Chinese NEV makers also offer better service and customer communication compared with their US peers,” Feng noted, while comparing Tesla’s “arrogant” attitude in handling consumer complaints, which inflamed widespread anger among Chinese consumers, with the “good reputation” of Chinese NEV start-ups such as Nio.

In May, BYD delivered its millionth NEV in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province to Mario Ho — the son of Macao tycoon Stanley Ho Hung-sun who passed away last year – making it the first homegrown EV producer to hit such a milestone, the company announced. 

BYD’s founder Wang Chuanfu said at the launch ceremony that the firm will speed up its international push. It is expected that its Tang series of EV models, powered by BYD’s new ultra-safe Blade Battery – which some have described as a game changer for the EV industry – will be shipped and sold in Norway this year.  

The US market share of EV sales is only one-third the size of the Chinese EV market, website Marketwatch reported, citing a White House document.

Xinhua News Agency