The good news is that BYD plug-in car sales have begun to rebound strongly from the Chinese government's self-inflicted collapse of the plug-in segment at the beginning of the year (as bureaucratic shuffling, and red-tape meant no EV subsidies, for any offering...for almost the first two months of the year).
BYD Tang
However, while the 6,069 plug-in sold in March was almost triple the ~2,000 moved in February and 12x higher than January (~500 sales), the damage is still being felt to some degree, as a year ago more 7,000 sales were made.
BYD's shareholders for sure will not be happy with the first quarter results of the company. BYD even sent out a proactive note to investors saying that EV incentives earlier in the year will hurt profits in Q1.
According to sales reports, four out of five BYD's plug-in models rebounded to reach the 1,000+ units a month level, while Qin stayed low at just 248 registrations.
Given the recent trends, we expect to see both BYD, and overall plug-in sales in China, to start setting new records again for April.
BYD sales breakdown:
- Qin EV300 – 1,678 (2,046 YTD)
- e5 – 1,567 (1,977 YTD)
- Tang – 1,509 (2,806 YTD)
- e6 – 1,067 (1,259 YTD)
- Qin – 248 (631 YTD)
source: ChooseAuto and EV Sales Blog
