Skip to footer

Chinese carmaker BYD says electric-car sales may triple this year

Chinese carmaker BYD delivered nearly 62,000 battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles last year, almost entirely in China. The company projects that its explosive sales growth will continue.

|
Jason Lee/Reuters/File
A customer checks a BYD e6 electric car at a dealership in Beijing, China (December 9, 2015). BYD projects that its sales could triple this year.

China's BYD eked out a global victory in electric-car sales last year, selling more plug-in cars than BMW, General Motors, Nissan, Renault, or Tesla.

The company delivered nearly 62,000 battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles last year, almost entirely in China.

Now, the company projects that it may be able to sell close to three times that number this year.

According to Bloomberg, BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu said the company may sell as many as 150,000 so-called New Energy Vehicles in China this year.

Both national and local Chinese governments are penalizing vehicles with combustion engines and incentivizing plug-in vehicles with a variety of rebates, tax advantages, and registration privileges.

The push for electric cars has two purposes. First, it's part a strenuous effort to reduce the notorious and hazardous air pollution in China's cities.

Second, it encourages Chinese carmakers to get experience with designing and building plug-in cars, which it views as a critical part of the global auto market in future years.

New Energy Vehicles include both emission-free battery-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, the latter being far more popular.

The network of public charging stations in China remains spotty, and a huge percentage of new-car buyers live in high-rise apartments rather than single-family homes.

That makes it entirely unclear whether any of those plug-in hybrids are actually ever plugged in.

Last year's new-energy vehicles sales in China totaled more than 330,000.

That figure, however, includes what would be deemed low-speed or neighborhood electric vehicles that aren't included in North American and European sales totals.

The official goal is for China to have 5 million such vehicles on its roads by 2020.

Famed investor Warren Buffet took a stake in BYD back in 2008, through his Berkshire Hathaway holding company, and has held it since then.

While BYD planned to launch its passenger cars into the U.S. market several years ago, it has pulled back from those plans and is focusing on electric buses instead.

California electric-car startup Tesla Motors will start taking orders in China next quarter for its Model X luxury crossover SUV, even before it launches the car in Europe.

The company had early hopes of strong success in China, but it stumbled at first and replaced the head of its Chinese unit.

The growing market for new-energy vehicles, however, is likely to help its long-term aspirations in China, which include a production plan for the Model 3 vehicle it will unveil this week.

This article first appeared in GreenCarReports.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Chinese carmaker BYD says electric-car sales may triple this year
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2016/0331/Chinese-carmaker-BYD-says-electric-car-sales-may-triple-this-year
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe