BYD leaves competition behind
Chinese carmaker is now also overtaking BMW
8/3/2023 2:57 p.m
In spring, China’s electric car manufacturer BYD replaced the dominant car manufacturer Volkswagen as the market leader. Now the Shenzhen-based company is also overtaking BMW in sales. Meanwhile, Chinese customers prefer to buy cars from China.
In the first half of the year, the Chinese car manufacturer BYD overtook the Munich-based group BMW in terms of vehicle sales for the first time. The Chinese top dog sold 1.3 million vehicles in the first half of the year, which corresponds to growth of 96 percent. Half of the cars were fully electric, the other half were plug-in hybrids. “The chance that BMW will be ahead of BYD again in the future should be zero,” writes industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the Center Automotive Research.
BMW did well in the first half of 2023. The carmaker sold 11.3 percent more vehicles than in the same period last year, he said. In the case of e-cars, BMW recorded more than a doubling of sales. Group sales increased in the second quarter by seven percent year-on-year to EUR 37.2 billion. But Dudenhöffer also points out that the next few quarters will not make things any easier given the now higher price competition in the world market and electric cars.
The German car manufacturers are increasingly falling behind in the turnaround to e-mobility: Volkswagen has no longer been the top dog in China, the largest car market in the world, since spring. BYD sold more vehicles in the People’s Republic in the first quarter than the previous market leader from Wolfsburg. The core brand was thus overhauled for the first time since the 1980s. “The Chinese car manufacturers have been getting better and more innovative in electromobility and networking for years. Chinese cars hardly differ from the western ones, some are even better,” explained the head of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach , Stefan Bratzl, recently ntv.de. China is the global lead market for electromobility, which is growing dynamically in contrast to the overall market.
And you can see that in the sales figures. The Chinese carmaker made significantly more profit in the first half of the year thanks to the boost in sales. Net profit is expected to be between 10.5 and 11.7 billion yuan (up to 1.46 billion euros), the Shenzhen-based company announced in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange in mid-July based on preliminary figures. That would be an increase of 192 to 225 percent compared to the same period last year.