China’s automaker, BYD, announces its 2025 global EV sales, showing an increase from the previous year’s sales. It’s projected to surpass Tesla in EV sales in 2025 and top the chart. Let’s see the sales numbers of BYD, the factors driving the sales, and other factors here.
The global EV market is booming with carmakers introducing hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid models, and pure-electric vehicles. Tesla achieved the most sales in the EV segment last year; however, BYD has secured this place.
This is a great achievement for the Chinese carmaker BYD globally. Tesla is yet to announce its 2025 sales record, but as per the January to September 2025 sales record, its sales will have a big difference from BYD.
What is the margin between Tesla and BYD global sales?
According to the BYD announcement, the carmaker’s global sales of the pure electric vehicle were 2,256,714 units, which has increased 27.9% from the 2024 calendar year. However, including hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the total BYD sales for the 2025 calendar year were 4,602,436 units.
The 4.6 million global sales of BYD EVs are 7.7% higher than the 2024 sales. Tesla is yet to officially announce its 2025 global EV sales, but based on its January to September sales record, we can estimate its sales. During January to September 2025, Tesla recorded 1.22 million unit sales.
According to market estimates, Tesla will have around 400,000 units of EV sales globally, taking the overall sales of the company in 2025 to 1.6 million units, which is quite behind BYD’s global sales. Last year, Tesla made it to the first position with barely a 20,000 units margin, but now it will surpass it with a large margin.
What’s driving China’s BYD EV sales?
The major factors that contributed to BYD’s aggressive growth and increasing global sales are as follows:
- BYD has expanded its global strategy and is available in various international markets, such as Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
- However, the largest market for BYD remains China as it’s the biggest merit for the brand, as the EV adoption in China is accelerating fast due to the government incentives and affordable EVs.
- The sale of BYD was 150% higher in 2025 than in 2022, thanks to its global expansion, large-scale production, and so on.
- Passenger vehicles account for most of the EV sales, though the plug-in hybrid vehicles declined.
- BYD has expanded its operation units globally to meet the demand and take advantage of local manufacturing, and save costs.
- By saving the manufacturing costs, the company is able to drop prices and provide affordable EVs to customers, making the BYD models popular among potential customers.
- Along with EV adoption, the carmaker is also innovating, coming up with technologies that can elevate the customer’s experience.
What are the top EV brands globally?
After the BYD announcement, it’s set that they are dominating the global EV market for now, but apart from them, here are the other brands that are doing well in the EV segment:
- After BYD, we have Tesla selling over 1.6 million units in 2025;
- Geely, a Chinese brand, may record 1.6 million unit sales in 2025;
- Volkswagen has not announced the official sales record, but by September 2025, it had recorded 717,000 unit sales.
- Leapmotor, another Chinese brand is emerges key EV player with a total of 596,555 EV sales in 2025;
- Xpeng+, a Chinese brand, also saw a rise in sales in 2025, with around 429,445 sales, showing a growth of 126% from 2024.
- Nio+, a Chinese brand, has recorded sales of 326,028 units in 2025, achieving a growth rate of 46.9% from last year.
What will be the Chinese carmakers’ future position in the global EV market?
The Chinese carmakers are dominating the automotive industry with their affordable pricing and tech-driven approach, and giving competition to the domestic brands. According to the Swiss investment bank analysis, the Chinese carmakers will dominate one-third of the global automotive market in the next five years.
Chinese carmakers have increased their factory outlets in Europe to push local manufacturing and scale globally. With Chinese carmakers dominating the market, it also brings pressure to keep the momentum, as other carmakers are working to enhance the driver assistance system and auto technology.
The record-breaking BYD EV sales indicate the Chinese carmaker’s dominance in the market and its growth. With increasing EV demand, the other carmakers need to catch up with the leading carmakers.
