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One of our team members mentioned yesterday that BYD beat Tesla in BEV sales last quarter, and that we should have an article about it. I did publish such comparisons in the past, so it was definitely on me to get a new one out now. (To be honest, I just forgot about doing these comparisons, and it’s been a year since I’ve done one, so this is a big update that goes much further back than last quarter.)
First things first, we’re looking at full battery electric vehicle sales. Tesla led in this field for years. BYD had a surge in the 4th quarter of 2023 when it beat Tesla, but then Tesla took back the title for a while again. However, in Q4 2024, BYD took the title again, and it held the #1 spot globally for 5 quarters in a row. Then, in Q1 2026, in the face of a big drop in BYD sales (and broader China auto sales), Tesla won back the title … briefly. Now that we have Q2 2026 numbers in, we see that BYD won again despite Tesla having its 4th best sales quarter ever. BYD had 557,090 BEV sales, while Tesla had 480,126 BEV sales. You can see the long-term quarterly trend in the chart above and the graph below. Then I’ll get to another topic….
One can also look at overall vehicle sales. BYD only sells plugin vehicles, but unlike Tesla, it sells plugin hybrids (with large batteries) as well as pure battery-electrics. Well, as you can see in the chart directly above and the graph below, BYD blows Tesla out of the water in total passenger vehicle sales. (No, I’m not adding BYD’s commercial electric vehicles here….) Since Q2 2022, BYD has outsold Tesla. That’s 17 consecutive quarters.
In Q2 2026, BYD had 1,088,382 total passenger vehicle deliveries, while Tesla had 480,126 total passenger vehicle deliveries. In fact, with 471,091 vehicle exports, BYD nearly had as many sales outside of its home market of China as Tesla had globally.
We’ll have to see what happens in Q3. Any guesses?
Here are normal static images of the charts embedded above:
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