BYD Automobile’s “world-class” road

Is BYD a world-class enterprise?

“It’s been a long time.”

This is the answer given by Li Yunfei, general manager of BYD’s brand and public relations department. Of course, when he said “world-class”, he did not refer to BYD’s passenger car business, but to the entire BYD Group.

From the late 90s of the 20th century to the early 00s of the 21st century, BYD has become one of the world’s top suppliers in the consumer electronics industry. Since the early 10s of the 21st century, BYD’s photovoltaic, energy storage and electric bus businesses have gradually entered the mainstream in overseas markets.

Today, BYD’s passenger car business has also shown “world-class” potential.

2023 marks the 70th year of China’s automobile industry. It was also this year that a Chinese company appeared for the first time among the top nine car companies in the world in terms of sales. That’s right, this Chinese company is BYD.

In 2024, BYD’s passenger car sales will also rank sixth in the world. At the same time, the sales scale of the BYD brand is even enough to rank among the top three in the global sales list of single car brands, second only to Toyota and Volkswagen, and in front of a series of world-renowned car brands such as Hyundai Motor and Ford Motor.

In the first half of 2025, BYD’s overseas sales will also reach 470,000 units, further boosting its global influence. For comparison, the company’s overseas sales in 2024 will be 430,000 units.

At the same time, BYD has become the champion of all categories of automobile sales in Singapore, Hong Kong, China and other markets, and the new energy category in Thailand, Brazil, Spain and other markets is in a “far ahead” position.

At the 2025 Chengdu Auto Show, Li Yunfei said in an exchange with core media such as Autohome that in the next few years, with the layout of more products, channels and the development of more markets, BYD’s sales in the global market will also increase!

Towards a “world-class” password?

“BYD has made a lot of slow efforts in overseas markets and suffered a lot.” Li Yunfei sighed when talking about BYD’s current achievements in overseas markets, “What everyone has paid attention to is BYD in the past two or three years.” In fact, for these two or three years, we have prepared for 20 or 30 years. ”

Three years ago, BYD’s monthly sales in the German market were less than 100 units, which was ridiculed by a lot and even called “going overseas to embarrass Chinese brands”. Two years ago, BYD won an order for 100,000 units in six years from the car rental company Sixt in Europe, and encountered a large number of local boycotts.

Now, times have completely changed. In some overseas markets, the price of BYD’s products has been similar to that of some high-end brands, and they often compete with overseas luxury brands and mainstream brands, and can still gain the recognition of more and more consumers.

On November 18, 2024, BYD ushered in the rolling off the assembly line of its 10 million new energy vehicles. In the fourth quarter of 2025, BYD will usher in its 14 million units, and possibly even the 15 million new energy vehicles off the assembly line.

“Tens of millions of users are our biggest confidence!” Li Yunfei said that BYD has always maintained this attitude.

Whether on Weibo or in the circle of friends, Li Yunfei often conveys a theme called “sell a car, make a friend”. This is the concept put forward by Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD Group.

According to Li Yunfei, whether it is visiting the domestic market or overseas markets, BYD’s leaders at all levels will go deep into the front line to communicate with customers and understand their pain points. At the same time, they will also go to all levels of dealerships to communicate with front-line salespeople to understand the market and customers.

At BYD, many people maintain this value: as long as the technology is good, the products are good, and the service is good, the rest is left to time.

Such values may come from Wang Chuanfu’s example. Li Yunfei said that Wang Chuanfu visits some markets almost every month, including domestic and overseas markets, just to understand the front line, understand consumers, and understand the accurate dynamics of the market more quickly.

Wang Chuanfu (first from left), chairman of BYD Group, came to the store to interact with users

The global automotive industry is currently in a stage of great change. In such a context, the consumer market is also changing rapidly. If the senior management of the enterprise sits in the office every day, the feedback of information will have a strong lag. In addition, because the feedback of information needs to be transmitted layer by layer, there will inevitably be deviations in the process of transmission.

If the information seen by the top management is both lagging and incomplete, the decisions made may be inaccurate.

In the past seven or eight years, Wang Chuanfu has continued to appear in various first-tier areas, including some county-level and township-level markets. Some consumers were looking at the car in the store when they suddenly saw Wang Chuanfu. This is actually conducive to increasing the favorability of consumers and salespeople towards the brand.

This is true for the domestic market and the same is true for overseas markets. BYD’s senior management will also go deep into the first-tier market when researching overseas markets to understand the different needs of different consumers. Then study how to combine different markets to provide better close services for consumers.

The accurate control of front-line consumer demand in different markets may be one of the core reasons why BYD has achieved rapid development in both domestic and overseas markets in recent years.

A familiar old road?

In Li Yunfei’s view, after the previous deep cultivation of overseas markets, BYD has initially entered the “harvest period”. However, the real harvest is not so easy, and BYD will also achieve it in stages.

According to the plan, BYD will launch more and more products overseas in the next few years. These products that will be launched in overseas markets are products that have already experienced fierce market tests in the Chinese market. At the same time, BYD’s overseas factories will also be built and put into operation, and the overseas dealer network will also be opened and operated on a large scale.

Starting from 2025, the Denza brand will also accelerate the process of going overseas. Previously, the Denza brand has entered Southeast Asia and other markets. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the brand plans to officially launch its first model, the Denza D9, in Europe (parameter |Request a quote). In the future, related models including Z9 and N7 will be invested in overseas markets one after another.

At the same time, BYD’s production bases in overseas markets are also being laid rapidly. In 2024, BYD’s Uzbekistan factory and Thailand factory have been officially put into operation. The company’s Brazilian plant rolled off the production line in early July 2025, and the Hungarian plant in Europe is expected to be completed and put into operation in the first half of 2026.

According to Li Yunfei, the production capacity of BYD’s single overseas factory is about 150,000 ~ 200,000 units.

Although each market is different, BYD roughly divides overseas markets into two categories: the first is that it has a large market capacity, but there are no local brands, and it hopes that more brands will build factories locally; the other is that the market capacity is large, but there are also strong car brands in the country.

For the first type of market, BYD will combine local resources to expand future development plans, such as building factories locally. This means that BYD is going out from products to industries, employment, and taxes, driving the development of the local automobile industry, and even driving the local automobile industry to go global.

In Southeast Asia, Latin America and other markets, BYD plans to set up R&D centers, design centers and other institutions.

BYD’s overseas market layout strategy without strong automobile brands is similar to the way many European, American, Japanese and Korean brands have played in the Chinese auto market in the past thirty or forty years.

Previously, overseas car companies shouted the slogan “In China, For China” in the Chinese market. Nowadays, BYD’s strategy for overseas markets is obviously “local, for the local”, first bringing products into the market, and then gradually landing the industrial chain, technology, management, etc. in overseas markets.

In some overseas markets with strong brands, BYD promotes each other by collaborating with local partners. At present, BYD has cooperated with Volkswagen, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla and other global leading car brands in terms of technology or supply. In Li Yunfei’s view, BYD and these brands are in different markets, and through their own different advantages, they are promoting the global automobile market to accelerate the strategic transformation of new energy.

BYD not only has new energy vehicles, but also power batteries, solar power generation, source storage and application technologies. With the help of relevant technical reserves, BYD is also trying to contribute to the accelerated transformation of green energy in different industries in different markets.

epilogue

In the first half of 2025, Autohome also conducted in-depth research in a number of overseas markets. In the survey, we deeply realized a sentence, that is, “the core of globalization is localization”.

Each overseas market has different economic and cultural forms. Only by combining the special needs of each market and carrying out a targeted localization layout of “one place, one policy” can enterprises have a chance to succeed in the local market.

Obviously, our research results coincide with BYD’s business philosophy for overseas markets.

At present, many overseas auto markets are taking a path very similar to the path taken by the Chinese auto market five or six years ago. In Li Yunfei’s view, as long as you start using smart electric vehicles, the habit of using cars will not go back to the era of traditional fuel vehicles. This is true for Chinese consumers, and so are overseas consumers.

Thanks to the layout of electrification technology development, market research, localization resource investment and other aspects in the past few years, coupled with the layout of a large number of products, channels, factories and other aspects that have been planned, BYD’s performance in the future wave of electrification in overseas markets has given people huge imagination.