China’s BYD overtakes Tesla as world’s biggest EV maker in Q4 2023

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD Co has achieved a historic feat by surpassing US-based Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest EV maker in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to a report by Global Times.

BYD said that it had sold about 526,400 EVs in the last three months of 2023, beating Tesla’s record of 484,500 deliveries during the same period. This marked the first time that BYD topped the global EV market on a quarterly basis.

For the whole year of 2023, Tesla still retained its spot as the biggest EV maker, as it delivered a total of 1.8 million EVs, larger than BYD’s total sales of about 1.57 million units. However, BYD’s sales growth rate of 73 percent for 2023 far outpaced Tesla’s 38 percent, raising the prospect that BYD will overtake Tesla in annual sales in 2024.

This is also significant considering that BYD’s market capitalization, at 573.17 billion yuan ($80.21 billion) as of Wednesday, represents only a fraction of Tesla’s $778.42 billion. Over the past six months, BYD’s shares dropped by 28.85 percent, while Tesla’s shares fell by 11.22 percent.

Despite such a huge gap in the financial market, analysts expect that BYD is well positioned to maintain its lead in EV sales in 2024 over Tesla.

BYD’s milestone also came as China’s whole EV sector saw a bumper year in 2023. 

According to the latest data from the China Association of Automobile Manufactures, in the first 11 months of 2023, China’s exports of new-energy vehicles jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to 1.09 million units. 

Thanks to such rapid growth, China’s total auto exports reached 4.41 units, up 58 percent year-on-year and outnumbering Japan’s 3.99 million units during the same period.

This also represents a landmark event for China’s auto industry as it becomes the world’s biggest auto exporter after surpassing Japan in 2023 and Germany in 2022 - two countries that had been dominating the world’s auto market for decades.