Tesla Rival BYD Sales Surge in August: Hybrid Vehicles Record 48% Increase, Battery-Only Cars Up 12%

Published: Sep 02 2024, 21:37 PM EDT

Chinese electric car maker BYD saw its sales surge in August.

CNBC reported Sunday that BYD had sold a record-setting number of vehicles last month. According to the Chinese automaker, the company witnessed an increase of 30% in its August sales, thanks to the production volume of 370,854 passenger cars.

Battery-only cars saw an increase of almost 12% while hybrid vehicle sales surged by 48%. The success lays a stark difference in the performance of certain vehicle startups last month.

Contrarily, Li Auto only managed to sell 48,122 cars in August, which is a step down from its 51,000 sales in July.

On the other hand, automaker Aito sold 31,216 vehicles in August, which was 10,000 less than the month of July. Aito also utilizes technology from Huawei, and the tech company is also planning to sell the Aito trademark and patents to Seres for 2.5 billion yuan ($352.5 million).

Several auto companies have also experienced a slowdown in August sales such as Nio, which sold 20,176 cars. The company's brand Onvo reportedly opened a total of 105 stores to kickstart the deliveries for the L60 SUV, its first-ever vehicle.

It was also revealed that Xpeng had made 14,036 sales, while Zeekr only managed to realize 18,015 deliveries.

CNBC also shared that Zeekr would launch its first SUV this September, which will be $1,400 lower than Tesla's Model Y. The automaker stated that the deliveries for the SUV would start by the end of 2024. The details regarding its assigned countries or areas are yet to be announced.

BYD also shared that it has sold 31,451 overseas, which also sets the year-to-date sales to 264,869. It has now surpassed the 242,765 overseas sales in 2023. CNBC estimates that BYD would achieve nearly 400,000 sales if the momentum is maintained until December.