The Chinese carmaker sold 506,804 vehicles in November, according to data filed with Hong Kong’s stock exchange on Monday. That puts its total sales year to date at 3,757,336 units. Year-to-date sales are up 40% year on year. Plug-in hybrids are primarily driving the surge; BYD sold just under 2.2 million hybrids in the first 11 months of the year, a nearly 70% year-on-year jump.

If BYD can maintain its momentum in the final month of the year, then the Chinese carmaker is poised to come close to, if not surpass, traditional automakers like Japan’s Honda and U.S. carmaker Ford.

Honda sold 3.11 million cars between January and October, according to the most recent data released by the Japanese automaker. That’s roughly at the same pace as 2023, when Honda sold just under 4 million cars. 

Ford reported 3.3 million cars sold in the first three quarters of 2024. At that pace, the U.S. carmaker will sell 4.3 million vehicles this year. (Ford sold 4.4 million cars in 2023.)

Tesla, the U.S. EV maker, delivered 1.3 million vehicles—all battery-powered—in the first nine months of the year, slightly higher than the 1.2 million battery electric vehicles sold by BYD over the same period. Tesla sold 1.81 million cars in 2023. 

But while BYD leads the EV market by a wide margin, it has a long way to go to challenge the very top of the global car market, led by Toyota and Volkswagen.

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Toyota, excluding its subsidiaries Daihatsu and Hino, sold 8.3 million vehicles in the first 10 months of 2024. 

Volkswagen reported sales of 6.5 million vehicles in the first three quarters of the year. 

Chinese auto market

Foreign automakers are struggling to compete with domestic EV manufacturers in China’s car market. Chinese consumers are increasingly choosing new energy vehicles, a category that includes both plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles, instead of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. 

Last week, U.S. carmaker General Motors (GM) admitted that the company’s poor performance in China could cost the company over $5 billion in restructuring costs and factory closures. GM was one of the top-selling car brands in China a little over a decade ago, but the abrupt shift to electric has turned the market into a “race to the bottom,” according to GM CEO Mary Barra. 

Other foreign carmakers are scaling back their operations in China. Volkswagen, the world’s second-largest automaker, sold its operations in Xinjiang at the end of last month citing “economic reasons”; Volkswagen’s work in the Chinese province was controversial, as Western governments accused Beijing of human rights violations against the province’s Uyghur majority. 

Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and Stellantis are also restructuring their production of ICE vehicles in China, including job cuts and closed factories.