BYD surprises with more than one million plug-in vehicles sold in the first quarter of the year

BYD has started 2025 in the best possible way, breaking global sales records. In just three months, from January to March, the Chinese manufacturer has been able to bring to market more than one million plug-in vehicles. These are pure battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. According to the data released by the company, sales in this period amounted to 1,000,804 vehicles, representing an impressive growth of 59.8 percent compared to the same period last year.

Of the just over one million vehicles sold by BYD, the vast majority were passenger cars, with a total of 986,098 units. The remaining 14,706 were commercial vehicles. On the other hand, of those 986,098 passenger vehicles sold, 416,388 units were pure battery electric, 38.7 percent more than in 2024. Surprising growth, but lower than that of the brand’s plug-in hybrids, whose growth rate was 75.7 percent, reaching 569,710 units sold.

But the good news for BYD does not end here: growth in sales of the Chinese manufacturer’s commercial vehicles in the first quarter of this year was even more spectacular, reaching 688.5 percent, with 14,706 units as we have already mentioned. BYD states that 1,127 were buses, while the rest, 13,579 units, were other types of commercial vehicles, with an impressive growth rate of 1,127 percent. The Chinese manufacturer has not provided specific data, however, on the number of pure battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in this category.

March was also a good month for BYD

Beyond the sales volume for the first quarter of the year, BYD has also released interesting information on the results achieved by the company during last March. In this regard, the Chinese manufacturer wanted to highlight that of the 395,091 plug-in vehicles produced during this period, 72,723 were exported. A particularly important figure considering that the company aims to double its exports throughout the current year compared with the previous one.

Finally, it is worth noting that by doing a simple calculation you may have deduced that if in this first quarter of the year BYD has sold just over one million vehicles, the forecast for the full year would slightly exceed four million. However, it must be taken into account that vehicle sales figures in China during the first quarter of the year tend to be considerably lower than in the following quarters, so it would not be at all surprising if BYD’s sales at the end of the year far exceeded four million vehicles. In fact, last year this figure was already surpassed, with 4.25 million plug-in vehicles.