BYD has a lot of potential as a manufacturer, but these are the cars that it has sold in Europe in all of 2024

Chinese car manufacturers, whether electric, hybrid or thermal, are the talk of the day in the automotive sector. The low price of their products and features equal to or superior to those of their European competitors has made some of them quickly stand out in the commercial section. Among their advantages, they also have low production costs, something that many European brands have already wanted to take advantage of by taking the manufacturing of their cars there, such as Cupra with the Tavascán or Volvo with the EX30.

There are many Chinese brands that have a cutting-edge, refined and attractive product that can really stand out even more in our market. MG is already among the best sellers, while one of the most promising manufacturers in this regard is BYDwhose initials are the acronym for Build Your Dreams (build your dreams).

The manufacturer has become better known if possible in the latter thanks to its presence among the four major sponsors of Euro 2024The Chinese, along with Vivo (telephony), Aliexpress and Hisense (household appliances), are the four companies that have invested a large part of their annual marketing budget in the European championship.

Of all of them, BYD may be the one that consumers are least aware of, so it may be really interesting to know where it stands as a car manufacturer in general, and particularly where it stands in Europe.

What is BYD?

It is currently the car manufacturer with the most sales in China, and it does so only by having plug-in hybrid and 100% electric cars in its range.

Last year, which was its best year to date, it managed to put more cars on the streets than any other in China by slightly surpassing the mark of three million units produced (3,045,231 unitsto be exact). Although this amount almost entirely originates in its own country, it does not mean that by volume, it is above big names in the industry such as Renault, BMW or Mercedes.

Of those more than three million, Half of them are 100% electric cars, approximately 1.5 million, so it is close to the 1.8 achieved by Tesla alone in this area. In the previous four years, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, BYD managed to produce and sell 455,073, 431,954, 747,540 and 1,881,669 units of its cars, respectively.

Studying its growth in recent years, it is easy to notice that from one year to the next the figures vary greatly instead of being stable or growing gradually, as happens with most manufacturers, but the truth is that this is because BYD is a relatively young manufacturer that is still establishing itself in many markets, since it was founded only in 1995, although it was not until 2005 when it mass-produced its first car.

Among the markets in which it has yet to fully develop its activity is Europe, where BYD has high hopes and for which they are betting very strongly. Proof of this is the multimillion-dollar sponsorship of Euro 2024 and that it has already had a cargo ship with which to bring its cars to Europe at its own expense, something only within the reach of true economic powers.

On the other hand, the truth is that for now BYD enjoys a tiny market share, although it will undoubtedly gradually gain presence on European and Spanish streets. In 2024, it has managed to register a total of 12,944 cars until the end of May, far from the industry’s ‘leaders’, whose sales at this point number in the hundreds of thousands, but at the same time well above the barely 2,000 units they achieved in all of 2023.

Today, the BYD range in Spain is made up of six models, all 100% electric except for a plug-in hybrid version of one of them, the BYD Seal U that Híbridos y Eléctricos had the opportunity to test a few days ago.

Their cars are characterized by being cheaper than equivalents in size and performance from European brands. The aforementioned BYD Seal U DM-i is a D-segment plug-in hybrid SUV comparable to a Toyota RAV4, but instead of having a starting price of 50,000 euros as the Japanese has in its PHEV version, the Chinese is content to start from barely 35,000 euros, an insurmountable difference of 15,000 euros that will undoubtedly steal sales not only from Toyota, but from all manufacturers when the brand becomes better known.