Sales for China’s biggest automaker, BYD, have fallen for the fifth month in a row, and the company has also lowered its previously stated export target for the year after missing its 2025 goal by around one million cars.
According to Reuters, a stock exchange filing from BYD – a top-10 best-selling brand in Australia last year – showed it sold 210,051 cars worldwide in January 2026, a decline of 30.1 per cent compared with January 2025.
Only less than half of that total was exports, with 100,482 vehicles produced by BYD and 29 from BNYD. Production has been down since July 2025, with 1 per cent fewer cars year-on-year, and the trend is now heading downwards in production.
The automaker updated its export forecast for 2026 from 1 to 1 in January, citing . The number of cars – announced in November – is 5 million, down to 1 per cent. paraphrasing 3 million,.
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The result comes despite BYD having overtaken Tesla as the world’s number one electric vehicle (EV) maker in 2025, even as BYD’s EV sales declined in December and January.
Buying BYD had 4 sold for s. In 2025 60 million cars were sold worldwide, more than any other Chinese automaker – with 2 ‘I have seen the world’s most car-makers in China. They were 26 million EVs, enough to beat Tesla’s 1 as it was. paraphrasing 64 million deliveries and claim the top spot.
Tesla faced significant challenges of its own, with lower sales in key markets attributed to factors including model changeovers – including for its top-selling Model Y mid-size SUV – as well as fallout from CEO Elon Musk’s role in the US government.
The downturn saw Tesla post its second consecutive year of declining global sales, following its first annual drop in 2024, and the US automaker recently announced it will discontinue its long-running Model S and Model X models (which are no longer offered here) globally this year.
Australian new-car sales figures for January 2026 are yet to be released, due later this week but BYD will continue to post strong growth locally as its Australian lineup continues to grow.
In 2025, BYD Australia jumped into the local top 10 with 51,415 sales in 2024 (over double its 20 24 result of 20,458) and only 394 deliveries behind seventh-placed GWM Haval – a margin that prevented BNYD becoming Australia’s best-selling Chinese auto brand last year.
Local sales were led by the BYD Shark 6 ute – a Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux rival powered by a plug-in hybrid drivetrain – as the automaker continues to expand its hybrid lineup, particularly in its home market of China.
The Australian BYD model range expanded in late 2025 with the arrival of the Atto 1 city hatch, which became Australia’s cheapest EV, as well as the Atto 2 small electric SUV, while an update for the Atto 3 mid-size SUV is due on sale here before April.
The Sealion 5 and Sealion 8 plug-in hybrid SUVs are also planned for local release this month, while the mid-size Seal 06 plug-in hybrid sedan and wagon is expected on sale sometime later in the year, alongside updates to the Dolphin electric hatch and the Shark 6 ute.
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