BYD targets overtaking Tesla as top electric vehicle seller in Europe by 2030

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BYD aims to topple Volkswagen, Tesla and Stellantis and become the largest battery-electric vehicle seller in Europe this decade, a top executive said.

European president Michael Shu said the Chinese carmaker planned a “huge investment” in factories, dealers and marketing in the region to convince motorists to buy its electric and hybrid vehicles.

“We are confident that we could be in a leading position” before the end of the decade, he told the Financial Times’ Future of the Car Summit. “We are moving to the next stage to decide a huge investment in the EU” that would be worth “billions of euros”.

BYD’s plans include a cut-price model based on the Seagull, which sells in China for less than $10,000. The European version of the model should cost less than €20,000, he said.

His comments are the boldest statement yet of BYD’s ambitions for Europe, which is one of the world’s most competitive car markets.

The business, backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, briefly overtook Tesla last year as the world’s biggest electric vehicle brand and is privately regarded by western industry leaders as the greatest threat to Europe’s own carmakers.

Brussels is investigating whether Chinese carmakers use subsidies to cut the prices of their vehicles, in a probe that is widely expected to lead to higher tariffs on imported models.

But Shu said the company planned to make its cars “in Europe for Europe”, in a move that would see it skirt any higher penalties and blunt the EU’s efforts to prevent an influx of Chinese models, as well as limit exposure to logistical bottlenecks faced by carmakers importing to Europe.

“To ship cars from China to Europe is not going to be long term. The long term is to produce locally,” he said.

The company is already building a new factory in Hungary that will produce its first cars next year, and the business plans to start studying sites for a second plant in the coming months.

As well as its battery-electric cars, the brand will also sell and produce plug-in hybrid vehicles in Europe, partly because the region has been slow to install charging infrastructure, Shu said.

“Still, the [battery-electric vehicle] is very important. The penetration is already high, especially in the Nordic area,” he said.

BYD’s battery-electric car market share in western Europe was just 1.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, according to Schmidt Automotive Research.

During the FT conference, senior executives from Nissan, Peugeot, Volkswagen and Hyundai have all flagged the higher competition posed by Chinese carmakers with their advanced technology, especially in batteries.

Still, BYD reported a 42 per cent fall in overall electric vehicle deliveries in the first three months of the year compared with the final quarter of 2023, due to flagging demand and increasing competition in its home market.

The company overtook Tesla in electric vehicle sales during the final quarter of 2023, when it shifted 526,409 EVs compared with 484,507 sold by Tesla between October and December. But last month, Tesla posted sales of 386,810 vehicles in the first three months of 2024, below an expected 450,000 but more than that of its Chinese rival.