BYD eyes Japan’s micro-car market with new EV

SHENZHEN: Chinese EV (electric vehicle) giant BYD plans to enter Japan’s microcar market in 2025 with a low-cost electric vehicle as part of its expanding global strategy, noted a carnewschina.com report in quoting a Financial Times article.

BYD Japan president Atsuki Tofukuji had confirmed in an interview with the Financial Times that the company will launch a new micro-EV explicitly designed for overseas markets and not sold in China.

An earlier report by carnewschina.com said that BYD plans to launch an affordable micro-electric vehicle in Japan in the second half of next year.

The new kei car will feature a 20kWh battery with a WLTC range of 180 km, support 100kW fast charging.

Aimed at competing with Japan’s top-selling electric microcars — the Nissan Sakura and Mitsubishi eK X EV — it may become the first foreign EV explicitly designed for the Japanese kei segment.

As microcars grew to 46.3% of Japan’s EV sales in 2022, up from just 2.6% in 2021, BYD is positioning itself to tap into this rapidly expanding market, having already sold 4,530 vehicles in Japan by March 2025.

Bloomberg had reported that the Shenzhen-based group posted its best month of sales yet for 2025 in April, a further sign that despite the broader industry pain, it's on track to hit its full-year target of 5.5 million deliveries.

BYD is also gaining ground overseas, noted the Bloomberg report.

It sold more EVs in Europe than Tesla for the first time in April, overtaking the American brand that long led the continent's EV segment.