BYD is China’s best-selling automaker for the fourth 12 months in a row, ahead of Geely, Chery and Great Wall Motors, despite falling wanting its sales goal by almost a million vehicles.
In a worldwide shift, China is about to develop into the world’s primary automotive maker in 2025, overtaking Japan for the primary time, and preliminary sales show BYD is at the highest of the list of Chinese brands.
Despite this, BYD’s 4,602,436 sales in 2025 – as compiled by CarNewsChina – fell 897,564 vehicles, or 16.32 per cent, wanting the publicised goal of 5.5 million.
While the figure is over seven per cent higher than in 2024, when it sold 4,250,370 vehicles, it represents the slowest recorded growth for the brand, with December 2025 sales seeing a rare decline in its electric vehicle (EV) numbers.
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Almost half of BYD’s total sales were EVs, at around 2.2 million units, which was enough for the brand to stay the world’s number-one EV maker for the second 12 months in a row.
Preliminary figures from rival Tesla suggest the electrical vehicle maker will finish on 1.64 million sales for the 12 months, well wanting BYD and down on the 1.79 million Teslas sold globally in 2024.
A record 1,046,083 BYD exports were recorded in 2025, marking the primary time the brand has sent multiple million cars abroad, as Chinese automakers looked overseas for sales growth in a cooling domestic market.
The record export number included the primary vehicle from its Denza premium brand shipped to Australia following its official launch here in late 2025.
The newest available Australian figures to the tip of November 2025 have BYD because the second-highest-selling Chinese brand and eighth overall, one place behind GWM Haval (Great Wall Motors).
In addition to automotive tariffs in Europe and america, Chinese brands also faced increased pressure from price cuts at home, which not only ate into profits but attracted tighter regulation.
This included Chinese government intervention on so-called ‘zero mileage’ cars, with an oversupply seeing some automakers allegedly sell a automotive in China before shipping it overseas to resell.
Second-placed Geely was one among only two top-five brands to satisfy or beat its sales goal, which it increased mid-year from 2.7 million to 3 million before recording 3,024,567 sales.
The opposite target-busting brand was fifth-placed Leapmotor – behind Chery and Great Wall Motors (sold as GWM Haval in Australia) – which sold 596,555 vehicles to simply beat its 500,000 goal.
Leapmotor CEO Zhu Jiangming told Reuters earlier this week the brand plans to sell a million vehicles in 2026, and 4 million annually inside a decade.
The one other brands in the highest ten to succeed in their targets were Xpeng – launched in Australia in late 2024 – and Xiaomi, which only sells cars in China, with first exports planned for Europe in 2027.
Great Wall Motors posted the most important discrepancy between its 4 million goal and final sales, recording 1,323,672 deliveries to fall short by around two-thirds.
| Brand | 2025 sales (source: Automotive News China) |
2025 sales goal |
|---|---|---|
| BYD | 4,602,436 | 5,500,000 |
| Geely | 3,024,567 | 3,000,000 |
| Chery | 2,631,381 | 3,260,000 |
| Great Wall Motors | 1,323,672 | 4,000,000 |
| Leapmotor | 596,555 | 500,000 |
| HIMA | 589,107 | 1,000,000 |
| Xpeng | 429,445 | 350,000 |
| Xiaomi | 400,000 (TBC) | 350,000 |
| Li Auto | 406,343 | 640,000 |
| Nio | 326,028 | 440,000 |
This Article First Appeared At www.carexpert.com.au
