BYD is China’s best-selling automaker for the fourth year in a row, ahead of Geely, Chery and Great Wall Motors, despite falling short of its sales target by almost one million vehicles.
In a global shift, China is set to become the world’s number one car maker in 2025, overtaking Japan for the first time, and preliminary sales show BYD is at the top of the list of Chinese brands.
Despite this, BYD’s 4,602,436 sales in 2025 – as compiled by CarNewsChina – fell 897,564 vehicles, or 16.32 per cent, short of the publicised target of 5.5 million.
While the figure is over seven per cent higher than in 2024, when it sold 4,250,370 vehicles, it represents the slowest recorded growth for the brand, with December 2025 sales seeing a rare decline in its electric vehicle (EV) numbers.
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Almost half of BYD’s total sales were EVs, at around 2.2 million units, which was enough for the brand to become the world’s number-one EV maker.
Preliminary figures from rival Tesla suggest the electric vehicle maker will finish on 1.64 million sales for the year, well short of BYD and down on the 1.79 million Teslas sold globally in 2024.
A record 1,046,083 BYD exports were recorded in 2025, marking the first time the brand has sent more than one million cars abroad, as Chinese automakers looked overseas for sales growth in a cooling domestic market.
The record export number included the first vehicle from its Denza premium brand shipped to Australia following its official launch here in late 2025.
The latest available Australian figures to the end of November 2025 have BYD as the second-highest-selling Chinese brand and eighth overall, one place behind GWM Haval (Great Wall Motors).
As well as automotive tariffs in Europe and the United States, Chinese brands also faced increased pressure from price cuts at home, which not only ate into profits but attracted tighter regulation.
This included Chinese government intervention on so-called ‘zero mileage’ cars, with an oversupply seeing some automakers allegedly sell a car in China before shipping it overseas to resell.
Second-placed Geely was one of only two top-five brands to meet or beat its sales target, which it increased mid-year from 2.7 million to three million before recording 3,024,567 sales.
The other target-busting brand was fifth-placed Leapmotor – behind Chery and Great Wall Motors (sold as GWM Haval in Australia) – which sold 596,555 vehicles to easily beat its 500,000 target.
Leapmotor CEO Zhu Jiangming told Reuters earlier this week the brand plans to sell one million vehicles in 2026, and four million annually within a decade.
The only other brands in the top ten to reach their targets were Xpeng – launched in Australia in late 2024 – and Xiaomi, which only sells cars in China, with first exports planned for Europe in 2027.
Great Wall Motors posted the largest discrepancy between its four million goal and final sales, recording 1,323,672 deliveries to fall short by around two-thirds.
| Brand | 2025 sales (source: Car News China) | 2025 sales target |
|---|---|---|
| BYD | 4,602,436 | 5,500,000 |
| Geely | 3,024,567 | 3,000,000 |
| Chery | 2,631,381 | 3,260,000 |
| Great Wall Motors | 1,323,672 | 4,000,000 |
| Leapmotor | 596,555 | 500,000 |
| HIMA | 589,107 | 1,000,000 |
| Xpeng | 429,445 | 350,000 |
| Xiaomi | 400,000 (TBC) | 350,000 |
| Li Auto | 406,343 | 640,000 |
| Nio | 326,028 | 440,000 |
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