New figures from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) show that BYD dominates the PHEV market in China. According to the figures just released, BYD had nine out of the 10 best-selling PHEV models last month. As always, though, there are some caveats with such information.
The top 10 list looks as follows:
| 1 | BYD Song | 48,769 |
| 2 | BYD Qin L | 32,941 |
| 3 | BYD Qin | 29,074 |
| 4 | BYD Destroyer 05 | 25,558 |
| 5 | BYD Seal 06 | 25,200 |
| 6 | BYD Han | 10,950 |
| 7 | BYD Tang | 10,839 |
| 8 | BYD Song L | 10,147 |
| 9 | Denza D9 | 8,514 |
| 10 | Chery Fulwin T9 | 8,309 |
As we can see, the only non-BYD car on the list is the Chery Fulwin T9. The table is based on wholesale sales of 944,000 new energy passenger vehicles in July, a 28% year-on-year increase.
The CPCA data seems to distinguish between EREVs and PHEVs, so the figures only cover PHEVs. In July, 318,000 PHEVs were sold, accounting for 33.7% of the total new energy vehicle market. This is a 73% year-on-year increase and is reportedly the main driver of growth for the new energy vehicle market.
Interestingly, for July, the Top five cars are all relatively cheaper models, and there is a big drop to the more expensive Han in sixth position. This trend, however, is not backed up by this year’s sales to date.
BYD’s dominance extends further, as can be seen in the Top 10 chart for the year so far. Even here only the bottom three cars are from producers other than BYD.
| 1 | BYD Song | 359,187 |
| 2 | BYD Qin | 179,439 |
| 3 | BYD Destroyer 05 | 163,745 |
| 4 | BYD Han | 76,816 |
| 5 | BYD Tang | 74,603 |
| 6 | Denza D9 | 59,104 |
| 7 | Qin L | 58,041 |
| 8 | Wuling Starlight | 54,604 |
| 9 | Geely Galaxy L7 | 42,741 |
| 10 | Lynk & Co 08 EM-P | 41,496 |
The biggest caveat with this data is that the sales are wholesale rather than retail. It is quite common for producers to push their dealers to buy inventory, which does not necessarily equate to final sales. In 2023, there was a huge problem with dealers having large inventory, which was not matched by the actual consumer demand.
What also reduces the meaningfulness of this data is that EREVs appear to be treated separately. An EREV is really just a series PHEV, and so theoretically should be treated in the same way as a parallel PHEV.
Despite these caveats, the data does help us see how much BYD is dominating the market in China. Interestingly, this is not solely because of BYD’s DM 5.0 technology; only around half the cars in the Top 10 list are currently using this version of BYD’s PHEV system.
Source: Fast Technology
