BYD Sales Down 30.7% in January — Can It Revive Sales Growth?

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BYD did not have a great start to 2026. Presumably, due to growing competition on the Chinese EV market, the ending of new energy vehicle (NEV) purchase tax exemptions in the country, and the natural market weakness at the beginning of the year, BYD’s sales in January were the lowest they’d been since February 2024.

Note that embedded versions of the charts in this article are on the bottom of the article. The embedded charts show better for some people.

Looking only at fully electric vehicles (BEVs), deliveries totaled 83,249 in January. For sure, most automakers would cheat and swindle for a chance to get those numbers, but it was clearly the second worst month for BYD BEVs in the past three years. Compared to December, deliveries were down 56.3%. More appropriately, compared to January 2025, sales were down 33.6%. It’s not a good start to the year, and the lull in market activity from the Chinese New Year should hit worse in February this year. Buckle your seatbelts.

Looking now at plugin hybrids (PHEVs), the results are … actually very similar. Sales were down 45.4% compared to December, and down 28.5% compared to January 2025. So, the drop in consumer demand did not discriminate by powertrain.

Combining BEVs and PHEVs and looking at NEVs as a whole, deliveries were down 50.5% month over month and were down 30.7% year over year.

As you can see above as well, sales at the end of 2025 were clearly much better than sales at the end of 2023, but they were not nearly as strong as sales at the end of 2024. It seems as though 2026 could struggle to repeat the results in 2024 or in 2025, but we shall see what BYD has up its sleeve.

Looking at things in this way, taking a big step back, the BYD BEV sales climb was a little slower and steadier in recent years, whereas its PHEV sales shot up but then dropped back a bit. Perhaps last year and January were just a pause in the upward momentum, or perhaps BYD has reached its peak and is going to level off at a lower level in the face of all the competition on the Chinese and global plugin vehicle market.

Personally, I do actually think BYD can reach higher peaks, thanks to growing sales outside of China. But we’ll see. It’s without a doubt a challenge to sell so many vehicles month after month!