BYD Running Away from Tesla on Vehicle Sales – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

We’ve now got Tesla’s quarterly sales numbers through 2024 and BYD’s quarterly sales numbers through 2024 (after crunching some numbers). So, it’s time for an updated look at the biggest EV sales rivalry of the past decade.

I’ll start with comparisons of BEV sales, and then I’ll get into a broader view of plugin vehicle sales from the two leaders in the “new energy vehicle” market.

BEV Sales Trends — BYD vs. Tesla

As we can see here looking at a bar chart of the two companies’ quarterly BEV sales across the past 3 years, BYD started a lot lower, climbed rapidly up to Tesla’s level by Q3 2023 (see an interactive version of the chart on the bottom of the article for easier viewing and comparison), spiked well above Tesla in Q4 2023, dropped much harder and steeper at the beginning of 2024, and then finished the year super strong with a 4th quarter that outperformed Tesla by basically 100,000 unites (595,413 BYD BEV sales versus 495,570 Tesla sales). You got all that from glancing at the chart, right?

The question is whether the 4th quarter will be the start of a new era in which BYD strongly outperforms Tesla in BEV sales, or if we’ll see BYD have a much stronger drop than Tesla in the first half of 2025 and then have to sprint at the end of 2025 again to make up for that. After all, BYD does get hit harder from the Chinese New Year than Tesla (whose sales are more spread out across the globe), and that’s what happened in 2024. Despite a much stronger end of year, BYD BEV sales reached 1,764,992 in 2024 while Tesla sales reached 1,789,226.

The graph above displays the same data, but I have to admit that it somehow makes the story look considerably different to me. but it really is the same story, so when you get into the details, there’s nothing different to say. I guess the one thing to say is it’s more obvious BYD’s BEV sales were below Tesla’s sales in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2024 as well as far below them in the 1st quarter. Though, the spike at the end of the year was so big that it was almost enough to make up for all of that. Impressive.

Plugin Vehicle Sales Trends — BYD vs. Tesla

Previously when comparing the two brands’ EV sales, I only looked at BEVs, not plug-in vehicles (PEVs) overall. This time, I rolled in the broader numbers. And …

Holy cow! From this view, Tesla and BYD look like they start at around the same level, but then BYD storms away and sees dramatically rising sales that absolutely leave Tesla in the dust. Honestly, even having covered this closely for a long time, I’m shocked by this chart. It’s embarrassing to look at how stagnant Tesla’s sales look compared to BYD’s crazy, enormous growth.

Of course, those extra BYD vehicles come with internal combustion engines, but they still offer a lot of electric range, and one would be stupid to not maximize that. It would be nice, though, to see some kind of data on what percentage of the driving is done on electricity and what percentage on gas.

Closing out with the line graph on this (before sharing the interactive charts and graphs), well, it’s the same thing. Tesla’s sales look almost stagnant in comparison, and BYD’s look like they’re going to the moon.

Congratulations to BYD on this truly impressive rise in sales.

To end, I always use static charts and graphs in the body of the article, because the interactive versions don’t show well on some people’s phones. But if you are able to view the following well, these interactive versions can be a lot more fun to use and do show the comparisons better when you hover over a bar or line. That’s especially true for the bar charts. Enjoy!

Related stories:

BYD Car Sales Rose 60% in December, 41% in 2024

Tesla’s Long-Term Sales Trend — In Charts