Sales for China’s biggest automaker, BYD, have fallen for the fifth month in a row, and the company has also lowered its previously stated export target for the year after missing its 2025 goal by around one million cars.
According to Reuters, a stock exchange filing from BYD – a top-10 best-selling brand in Australia last year – showed it sold 210,051 cars worldwide in January 2026, a decline of 30.1 per cent compared with January 2025.
Exports accounted for just under half of that total, at 100,482 vehicles, while BYD produced 29.1 per cent fewer cars year-on-year, extending a downward trend in production that dates back to July 2025.
In January, the automaker revised its 2026 export forecast from 1.5 million cars – announced in November – down to 1.3 million.
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The result comes despite BYD having overtaken Tesla as the world’s number one electric vehicle (EV) maker in 2025, even as BYD’s EV sales declined in December and January.
BYD sold a total of 4.60 million cars globally in 2025 – more than any other Chinese automaker – with 2.26 million of them being EVs, which was enough to eclipse Tesla’s 1.64 million deliveries and claim the top spot.
Tesla faced significant challenges of its own, with lower sales in key markets attributed to factors including model changeovers – including for its top-selling Model Y mid-size SUV – as well as fallout from CEO Elon Musk’s role in the US government.
The downturn saw Tesla post its second consecutive year of declining global sales, following its first annual drop in 2024, and the US automaker recently announced it will discontinue its long-running Model S and Model X models (which are no longer offered here) globally this year.
Australian new-car sales figures for January 2026 have not yet been published and are due later this week, but BYD is expected to continue posting strong growth locally as its Australian lineup expands.
BYD Australia surged into the local top 10 in 2025 with 51,415 sales in 2025, more than double its 2024 result of 20,458, and only 394 deliveries behind seventh-placed GWM Haval – a margin that stopped BYD becoming Australia’s best-selling Chinese auto brand last year.
Local sales were led by the BYD Shark 6 ute – a Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux rival powered by a plug-in hybrid drivetrain – as the automaker continues to expand its hybrid lineup, particularly in its home market of China.
The Australian BYD model range expanded in late 2025 with the arrival of the Atto 1 city hatch, which became Australia’s cheapest EV, as well as the Atto 2 small electric SUV, while an update for the Atto 3 mid-size SUV is due on sale here before April.
The Sealion 5 and Sealion 8 plug-in hybrid SUVs are also planned for local release this month, while the mid-size Seal 06 plug-in hybrid sedan and wagon is expected on sale sometime later in the year, alongside updates to the Dolphin electric hatch and the Shark 6 ute.
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