BYD’s at 20% Share of Cumulative Plugin Vehicle Sales!

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We’ve been logging a handful of big EV statistics lately, but one nearly snuck under our noses. It’s an amazing one, and it also brings us back to a years-long rivalry. But I’ll wait until the end to circle back to that.

First of all, thanks to reader Madan Rajan, we noted last week that the world passed 75 million cumulative plugin vehicle sales in November. That’s a lot of cars, and a lot of emissions being cut. We could actually pass 100 million in 2026, but it’s more likely we’ll do so in early 2027.

A little more recently, BYD passed a significant sales milestone of its own. The company surpassed cumulative production of 15 million plugin vehicles.

Luckily, astute reader–writer Larry Evans was around to make the connection! As he noted, “With 75 million cumulative total plug-in sales, that puts BYD at 20% lifetime market share.” Indeed! Just about 20% of those 75 million plugin vehicle sales must have been BYD sales! That one out of every five cars sold…. Stunning.

Now, after dominating its home market, the Chinese cleantech company is also surging in Europe, and gaining more and more market presence and share in South America, Africa, and other parts of Asia. Can it maintain its 20% share of the plugin vehicle market even as the market quickly expands, matures, and diversifies? That seems unlikely, but it would be an amazing achievement.

Now, some may wonder how Tesla fares in comparison. I just checked my spreadsheet tracking Tesla’s quarterly and cumulative sales. The company was at 8,464,694 cumulative deliveries at the end of the 3rd quarter. Perhaps add another 235,000 for October and November and we can put them at 8.7 million. That would be a bit less than 12% share of the cumulative plugin vehicle market. Still an impressive, noteworthy achievement, even if it’s just a bit more than half of BYD’s total. Of course, there’s also a caveat — Tesla has never sold plugin hybrids, only full battery electrics. If we looked at the BEV market only, Tesla would look better and BYD wouldn’t be at 20%. I’ll see if I can get the BEV numbers from José Pontes for another article on that topic.

One more caveat: This is all concerning the modern EV era. It doesn’t include EV sales from the late 19th and early 20th century. This EV era is much bigger, though, and I assume it will last much longer.

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