BYD reports an outstanding streak of plug-in electric car sales records with another huge monthly result in October.
Last month, the Chinese manufacturer managed to sell* over 80,000 plug-in cars (mostly in China), which is 263% more than a year ago!
* CPCA reports wholesale shipments (China and export), not registrations/deliveries.
This result comes after 40,116 in June, 50,057 in July and 60,508 in August and 70,022 in September, which indicates that BYD likes to increase the bar by about 10,000 units a month.
We don't know how far it might go, but even maintaining the 80,000/month rate would translate into close to 1 million per year. That's Tesla territory, although Tesla sells only BEVs, while BYD is kind of 50/50 with PHEVs now.
The plug-in car sales also stand for 90% of the total BYD car sales, which once again indicates the fade of ICE.
BYD car sales breakdown:
- BEVs: 41,232 (up 176% year-over-year)
- PHEVs: 38,771 (up 444% year-over-year)
- Total: 80,003 (up 263% year-over-year)
BYD plug-in electric car sales in China – October 2021

So far in 2021, the company sold in China over 410,000 plug-ins (up 226% year-over-year).
BYD car sales breakdown:
- BEVs: 226,356
- PHEVs: 184,445
- Total: 410,801

Sales by models - month (year-to-date)
Multiple BYD models set new all-time high monthly results or were near the previous best results.
The top one is of course the BYD Qin Plus DM (PHEV), which has raised the bar to 17,503 units and is now officially the most popular BYD plug-in car with over 78,000 units YTD.
The BYD Song DM (PHEV) also sets a five-digit record of 11,706. Then we can see BYD Qin Plus EV record of 8,405 (new record), which together with the PHEV version translates into a total of 25,908 for the Qin Plus.
Other records are BYD Dolphin (6,018), BYD Song EV (4,588), BYD e2 (4,150) and BYD e3 (1,012). The BYD Han EV and Han DM (PHEV) are close to their records as well.
It's clear to us that with such outstanding results, the company might still be production constrained and could go even higher.
Demand for the Dolphin model - the first based on the all-new e-platform 3.0 platform and Ocean series - is quite high. The Chinese media (CnEVPost) says that about 10,000 orders were placed in October alone. The Dolphin is another model that proves that affordability matters.
Here is the rank of models year-to-date:
- BYD Qin Plus DM (PHEV) - 17,503 (78,316 YTD)
- BYD Han EV - 8,287 (66,867 YTD)
- BYD Song DM (PHEV) - 11,706 (49,291 YTD)
- BYD Qin Plus EV - 8,405 (39,053 YTD)
- BYD Tang DM (PHEV) - 6,762 (31,439 YTD)
- BYD e2 - 4,150 (27,416 YTD)
- BYD Yuan EV - 6,507 (26,304 YTD)
- BYD Han DM (PHEV) - 2,800 (24,256 YTD)
- BYD Song EV - 4,588 (20,679 YTD)
- BYD Qin EV + Qin Pro EV - 1,817 (16,225 YTD)
- BYD Dolphin - 6,018 (10,773 YTD)
- BYD D1 - 348 (9,503 YTD)
- BYD Tang EV - 100 (4,650 YTD)
- BYD e3 - 1012 (2,732 YTD)
- BYD E6 - 0 (1,911 YTD)
- BYD Song MAX DM - 0 (733 YTD)
- BYD Qin PHEV - 0 (410 YTD)
- BYD e1 - 0 (243 YTD)
An interesting thing is that the BYD D1, envisioned for ridesharing, is not selling in high volume yet. A few models appear to be, at least temporarily, retired.

According to the data (via Moneyball), besides plug-in cars, BYD delivered last month also 1,037 commercial electric vehicles, including 570 buses. Year-to-date, sales of commercial electric vehicles amounted to 7,818, including 4,404 buses.
In total, plug-in vehicle sales stood at 80,040 last month and 417,619 YTD.
Exports remain a very small part of BYD volume - only 3,001 units during the first nine months, compared to over 90,000 in the case of Tesla and 15,786 eGT.