Chinese brand BYD to top EV sales charts in 2022: importer

Fledgling electric car brand BYD expects to outsell all other brands in the local EV sales race in its first year on sale.

The managing director of BYD importer Nexport, Luke Todd, is boldly predicting the Chinese car maker will top the local EV sales charts the same year cars start rolling off the boat in 2022.

“We’ll do that in 2022,” he said when asked if BYD could sell more than the circa-3500 cars Tesla sells each year in Australia.

BYD has bold plans for the Australian market.

“With the product we’ll be releasing and at the price point we’ll be releasing there is no reason why we won’t be.”

Granted, we’re talking small numbers.

Of the 916,968 vehicles sold in Australia in 2020 just 1769 were listed as electric vehicles with the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, which compiles those figures.

But those stats don’t include Tesla, which in 2020 sold about 3500 cars in Australia.

With Tesla Model 3 production recently switched to China and an influx of new EVs from the country that buys more cars than any other, it’s looking like China will dominate EV sales in Australia.

That suggests Todd believes BYD will sell upwards of 4000 cars in its first year on sale.

That would be quite an achievement for a new brand, let alone one only selling EVs.

To put it in perspective, in its first full year on sale, 2008, Skoda sold just 818 cars Down Under.

When it relaunched in 2017, MG – now a powerhouse at the budget end of the market, last year selling 15,253 cars – managed just 600 sales.

And with the might of General Motors and Holden behind it, European brand Opel struggled to just 541 sales in a partial year of 2012 sales before deciding it was all too hard and leaving the country.

So how does BYD think it will pull off the near-impossible?

Price, tech and quality, according to Todd, who talks a big game.

“We will be the first product that will have a suite of vehicles in a price point parity point to legacy type vehicles.

“We are in a different league. What we’re doing is hyper-charging that from being in a position where we [Australia] are at the moment [with EVs], to being a world leader by bringing high quality electric vehicles that will be affordable.”

In short, BYD believes it’s bringing a USP others can’t come close to: an EV with quality appeal at a price that Toyota, Mazda, Hyundai and others sell mainstream cars at with petrol engines.

“We’re not just trying to introduce a brand that does the same as what other cars do. We are changing the dynamic, we’re changing the market.”

But muscling in on the turf currently dominated by Tesla – and being encroached on by BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Hyundai and Kia – won’t be easy.

Let the battle begin…