On December 4, BYD Japan announced that 10 of its sales outlets across the country had signed cooperation agreements with the Japanese local governments to use its pure electric vehicles to power shelters, hospitals, and other facilities to maintain the operation of critical infrastructure in the event of a natural disaster.
BYD’s pure electric vehicles have a “Vehicle to Home” (V2H) function that can be used as a power source to power homes or businesses in an emergency. For example, the BYD Atto 3 can provide a household with about 4 days of electricity. The BYD Atto 3 comes standard with an onboard bidirectional charger, allowing it to discharge energy from its battery.
In July 2022, BYD officially announced its entry into the Japanese market and announced the introduction of three pure electric models: Atto 3 (known as the Yuan Plus in China), Seal, and Dolphin. Subsequently, on January 9, 2023, the Atto 3 and Dolphin were launched in Japan; in June 2024, the Seal was officially launched.
From January to September this year, BYD’s car sales in Japan were 1,742 units, which was a 96.6% increase compared with the same period last year, but the overall sales volume was not much.
For comparison, in the first half of 2024, the sales volume of imported cars in Japan was 113,887 units, a year-on-year decrease of 7%, according to JAIA. Specifically, pure electric vehicle sales were 10,785 units, accounting for nearly 10% of the total number of imported cars in Japan. BYD’s sales in Japan in the first half of this year increased by 88% year-on-year to 1,084 vehicles, and BYD’s ranking in imported car sales in Japan also rose from 19th in the same period of 2023 to 14th.
Even Tesla only sells about 4,000 to 5,000 vehicles a year in the Japanese market. Japanese users do not seem to have a strong preference for pure electric vehicles, and instead, prefer economical and fuel-efficient hybrid models.
It’ll be interesting to watch how this agreement might impact BYD’s sales performance in Japan in the coming years.
