BYD Becomes 4th Best Selling Automaker in the World! – CleanTechnica

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Toyota was again the top selling automaker in the world in 2024. Toyota Motor Corp. ended the year with 10.82 million sales (though, that was down 3.7% from 2023). Top rival Volkswagen AG was well behind with 9.03 million sales (down 2% from 2023). Hyundai Motor Group reached 7.23 sales (down 1.8% from 2023).

But the big story of the year was in 4th place: BYD Co. rose 41.3% over its 2023 total and sold 4.27 million vehicles. Every single one of them plugs in to charge. The 4th best selling automaker in the world is a plugin vehicle producer.

BYD passed up Honda (3.81 million sales), Nissan (3.35 million sales), and Suzuki (3.25 million sales) to take the 4th spot. Of course, it’s still far behind the top three, but if it could see similar growth again in 2025 and reach 6 million global passenger car sales, it wouldn’t be too far off of Hyundai Motor Group’s 7.23 million sales. And that includes Hyundai and Kia sales. Hyundai by itself sold only 4.14 million vehicles, fewer than BYD!

10 years ago, or even 5 years ago, who would have thought an electric vehicle producer would be the 4th best selling automaker in the world? And who would have thought it would be BYD?

Of course, last year, it became clear BYD was coming for the title. In mid-2024, we published the following stories:

By 2030, BYD could certainly rise up to #1 in the world, helped by Toyota’s slow transition to electric vehicles and Volkswagen Group’s own struggles. We’ll see.

As noted yesterday when reporting that BYD’s Stella Li was named World Car Person of the Year, BYD has more than 110,000 employees in its R&D division. It is growing fast because it is innovating fast, and I think we can count on that continuing. Also, while the company’s growth has been massively driven by its domestic sales in China, the company is now focusing a lot of effort on expanding across the globe and exporting more vehicles. The company has a plan, and it is implementing that plan quite well.