Look out Mazda, look out Ford! Chinese brand BYD plans to double sales again to be top three in Australia in 2026!
The big sales talk is back at BYD and the ambitions are huge and immediate.
The Chinese brand wants to be fighting for a top three sales spot in 2026!
Now, you might dismiss that as more big chat from a brand that has voiced some huge targets in the past.
Remember when Luke Todd, the boss of former distributor EVDirect, said toppling Toyota was the target?
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Well it’s not Todd making the big pronouncements because factory subsidiary BYD Australia now owns the distribution rights.
Instead, the forecast comes from BYD Australia Chief Operating Officer Stephen Collins, an industry veteran with decades of experience at Nissan and Honda, and he’s not prone to making over-the-top pronouncements.
“If we got to the end of the year [2026] and we weren’t close to the top three, I think I would be a bit disappointed,” said Collins.
To be fighting for the top three would likely mean displacing perennial podium placegetters Ford or Mazda. In 2024 Ford sold 100,170 vehicles to be second and Mazda sold 95,987 to be third.
Of course, at least for now, number one Toyota remains well out of reach with more than 200,000 sales annually.
In 2024, BYD sales are up 149 per cent and it is on course to finish in the top 10 for the first time in either seventh or eighth with between 45,000 and 50,000 sales.
So, essentially, Collins is predicting a doubling of sales in 2026. He stressed the 2026 total won’t include the sales of the BYD-owned Denza premium brand that is launching before the end of 2025.
It’s a meteoric and relentless sales climb. When EVDirect launched BYD in Australia with the Atto 3 in 2022 the brand finished 37th in sales, in 2023 it was 22nd and in 2024 16th.
There are a bunch of reasons Collins says he is confident BYD can maintain its startling acceleration.
The Shark 6 ute line-up is also set to expand significantly to address the fleet market with a dual-cab chassis 4×4 and boost its towing capability via a 2.0-litre MODEL with the full 3500kg braked towing capacity.
And more Shark variants than that are being considered too.
All that Shark action is reported in a separate news story published on EV Central.
BYD Australia has set up a fleet department to grow the brand’s non-private customer’s from five to 15 per cent of sales.
The fleet department won’t only be focussed on Shark 6 but also SUVs and even the Atto 1 as potential fleet sales.
And Collins teased BYD’s Australian commercial vehicle line-up would be boosted further by an expansion into delivery vans.
“We’re working on some other new opportunities,” he told EV Central. “Some new segments … particularly in the commercial type space.”
Read more about BYD’s van plans here.
In addition to all that, Collins said the brand was in a position to continue its expansion because of the amount of backroom work going on.
“We’re really working hard on service and parts to create trust, to create loyalty, to create retention,” he said.
“You’ve got to have trust. You’ve got to look after customers. You’ve got to have good products.
“You’ve got to have good value. You’ve got to have a good [dealer] network. Network’s a big part of it.”
Collins said the aim was to expand from 90 to 120 dealers by the end of 2025 and then to 150 by the end of 2026.
“Every one of those will be full-on sales, of course, but service and parts. So I think it’s not one or two or maybe five or six components to give me that confidence.
“I think it’s a whole host of things, some of which we’re doing really well now, some of which we have to really improve.”
Parts availability has proved a bugbear with some Chinese brands and Collins revealed BYD was addressing that with an expansion of its warehouse capacity.
“We’ve just invested in a 20,000 square metre parts warehouse in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
“We’ll have a warehouse in Brisbane, and we may well have some other warehouses around the country to make sure we’re stocking the parts and can deliver the parts.”
Of course, all the Chinese brands are all talking a big game at the moment. GWM says its wants to be top five within two years and Chery is launching yet another new brand called Lepas in Australia in 2026.
Collins concedes it’s shaping as a brutal battle, but says he’s focussed only on what he can control.
“I spend my days and nights thinking about what we’re doing, not what someone else is doing,” he said.
