SHANGHAI, May 1 (Reuters) – Chinese EV giant BYD’s vehicle sales fell for an eighth straight month in April, down 15.5% from a year earlier and extending its longest-ever downturn as it struggles with weak demand at home.
Overseas sales of passenger vehicles and pickup trucks, increasingly a source of growth for BYD, jumped 35% to 130,000 vehicles last month, according to Reuters calculations based on a Weibo post by BYD executive Li Yunfei.
The company has not disclosed its overall sales target for this year, but has said it’s “confident” about selling at least 1.5 million vehicles abroad.
The biggest Chinese competitor to Tesla posted its steepest profit drop since 2020 in the January-March period, as the bulk of its sales in the budget segment priced under 150,000 yuan ($21,935.60) come under growing pressure from Geely and Leapmotor.
BYD’s previous longest sales decline lasted six months amid a rollback of government electric-vehicle subsidies that ended in December 2019.
As it navigates challenges at home, where reduced trade-in subsidies for entry-level EVs and plug-in hybrids are expediting a shift toward premium models, BYD is launching models with faster-charging batteries and building a super-fast charging network to reassure buyers of its technological edge.
It is also raising the price of its in-house driving assistant system add-on for EVs from Friday, citing rising global memory hardware costs.
(Reporting by Casey Hall and Qiaoyi Li; Editing by Joe Bavier)
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