Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD plans to become the world’s largest car manufacturer by sales volume in the next five years. This ambitious claim was made by the chairman of the board of that company, Wang Chuanfuin front of almost a thousand shareholders at the annual meeting held on June 9.
Doubling sales
From current business results to that set goal is quite a long way. BYD finished sixth in the world in 2025 with 4.6 million vehicles sold, while the current leader, Japan’s Toyota, sold more than twice as many cars as them. To reach the top spot in the next five years, BYD would have to roughly double its annual sales volume, assuming Toyota stays at the same level or declines.
Achieving this goal is hampered by the fact that vehicle deliveries in BYD’s domestic Chinese market in the first five months of 2026 fell by more than 20% compared to the same period last year. As the main operational constraint for growth in 2026, Wang nevertheless singled out the production of the second generation of Blade batteries. The overhaul of production lines to adapt to the new battery technology – which supports ultra-fast charging from 10% to 97% capacity in just nine minutes – disrupted the production of several models during the first half of the year. The president of the board indicated that the process of speeding up production is progressing and that this bottleneck is expected to ease.
Outside of China, January-May sales were up 65% year-on-year, with Brazil, the United Kingdom and Australia emerging as the top three overseas markets. Sales outside the domestic market in the first half of the year are going even faster than the revised annual target, which was raised from the original 1.3 million to 1.5 million units for 2026.
Europe is strategically the most important
With the US market inaccessible to them, and tariff barriers remaining an obstacle in the rest of North America (despite some concessions from Canada), Europe has become the most strategically important field for BYD’s ambitions. Their market share in the European Union increased to 1.9% in the first four months of 2026 compared to 0.8% in the previous year.
The factory in Hungary, BYD’s first in Europe, will start production of the Dolphin Surf model in the fourth quarter of this year. The company is simultaneously investing almost two billion euros in setting up 3,000 ultra-fast charging stations across Europe by 2027. Each station costs around 580,000 euros and draws energy from built-in batteries on site instead of directly from the power grid, with BYD seeking to build its own ecosystem around its battery technology.