BYD speeds ahead of Volkswagen in Chinese car sales race

BEIJING: Volkswagen fell further behind Chinese car market leader BYD during the second quarter of 2023, according to data released by the China Automotive Technology and Research Centre (Catarc).

BYD sold almost 600,000 cars in its home market during the three-month period, with Volkswagen at around 544,000. In the first quarter of 2023, the gap between the two was around 15,000 vehicles.

After topping the rankings since Catarc first published market data in 2008, the German manufacturer ceded first place to BYD earlier this year as the latter's bigger range of electric vehicles (EV) helped it pass out its foreign rival in a market where around 2 in 5 cars sold are electric or hybrid and where domestically-made cars are less expensive than imports.

Volkswagen's March-June sales in China included 23,000 electric cars, the Catarc numbers showed, putting it far behind Tesla's almost 160,000. This made the US brand the second-biggest EV supplier in China after BYD, even if it came in only 12th overall.

BYD, which is backed by US billionaire investor Warren Buffett, overtook Tesla as the world's biggest supplier of "clean" engine cars in 2022, though around half of the BYD sales were of hybrids rather than EVs.

The data were published in the wake of Audi and China's SAIC Motor, a Volkswagen partner, in mid-July announcing an EV partnership after Audi's recent struggles in the Chinese auto market, the world's biggest.

In June, official trade data suggested China was on track to overtake Japan as the world's biggest car exporting country in 2023, with almost 2 million units shipped abroad from January to May, including 457,000 EVs.