China’s BYD saw a massive surge in global sales last year. It not only topped Tesla as world’s largest seller of battery-electric vehicles but also beat Ford Motor Co. in overall global sales. More from Headlight.News.
BYD officials reveal the new Megawatt charging system rolling out in China.
China’s hungry domestic automakers are taking no prisoners, it seems. Collectively, they saw a huge surge in export sales since the beginning of the decade, offsetting slower growth in their home market. And that’s positioned them as a serious threat to established manufacturers.
BYD is a case in point. The automaker last year managed to topple Tesla as global EV king-of-the-hill. But, it turns out, the company – whose name is short for “Build Your Dreams” – also surged past another industry mainstay.
Delivering 4.6 million vehicles around the world in 2025, BYD outsold Ford Motor Co. which saw its own global volume dip to 4.4 million.
Gaining ground globally
A BYD Denza N7, coming off the assembly line.
China is the world’s largest automotive market, last year consumers there purchasing about 31.4 million vehicles, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. The numbers have actually flattened out in recent years, even as the industry there has been locked into a profit-sapping price war.
That’s encouraged manufacturers to push exports which have surged from barely 1 million at the beginning of the decade to a record 8.1 million in 2025, a 30% year-over-year increase.
BYD has ridden that surge, exports making up about one in four of its sales in 2025.
Plugging in
Tesla lost its EV sales crown to BYD last year.
The automaker uses a variety of different powertrain technologies, though it halted production of gas-only products in 2022, switching to electrified systems including conventional and plug-in hybrids and EVs.
(It’s not alone, 3.43 million of the vehicles Chinese manufacturers exported last year falling into what China calls the New Energy Vehicle, or NEV, category: plug-in hybrids and EVs.)
BYD alone sold 2.26 million all-electric vehicles around the world in 2025, a 27.9% increase. That allowed it to topple Tesla which sold 1.64 million EVs. That was a nearly 9% year-over-year decline, its second consecutive annual dip.
Taking down Ford
Ford CEO Jim Farley insisted parts of the company performed well in 2025, despite the $8.2 billion loss.
Ford had a tough year in 2025, the automaker reporting an annual loss of about $8 billion. Much of that was due to sizable write-downs on its stuttering EV program. The Detroit automaker has scrapped development of several new battery-electric models and, in December, ended production of its big F-150 Lightning EV.
Sales of conventional F-Series models helped it grow U.S. sales but it lost traction in Europe and a number of other overseas markets. All told, Ford delivered 4.4 million vehicles worldwide in 2025, down from 4.47 million the year before.
BYD, meanwhile, reached a record 4.6 million sales for the year., up from 4.27 million in 2024. What’s all the more significant about that is the fact that the Chinese maker doesn’t compete in the U.S. market which is second only to China in terms of annual sales,
Canada just announced a trade deal with China that will initially open that market up to sales of 50,000 Chinese-made EVs annually. There is speculation that the Trump administration could open up the U.S. to brands like BYD, as well, if it got an attractive enough trade package. But, were that to happen, the administration is widely expected to demand that manufacturers like BYD set up U.S. production sites.
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