08 September 2025, Bavaria, Munich: Stella Li, Vice President of the automobile manufacturer BYD, speaks during a presentation by the manufacturer BYD at the press day of the International Motor Show IAA (IAA Mobility, International Motor Show) at the company’s stand in a hall of the Munich Trade Fair (Bavaria, Germany) on September 8, 2025.
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At a time when electric vehicle sales growth is slowing in China, BYD expects the country’s electric vehicle market to grow – in contrast to smaller rival Nio, which recently said the industry’s “golden era” was over.
“With all the innovation technology that is being brought to market, the Chinese market will very quickly move up to … almost 80% EV penetration,” BYD Executive Vice President Stella Li told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal on Monday.
Thanks to government support and a flood of vehicle options, the penetration rate of hybrid and pure battery vehicles has risen rapidly in just a few years, exceeding half of new passenger cars sold in 2024 and reaching a record 62.9% last month, according to the China Passenger Car Association.
The adoption rate of electric cars remains just under 10% in the U.S., while that figure is about 25% globally, the International Energy Agency said last month.
U.S. tariffs of 100% on electric cars made in China have limited local sales. BYD was added to the Pentagon’s list of companies linked to the Chinese military on Monday along with several other companies. The electric vehicle maker did not respond to a request for comment.
However, BYD is optimistic for the domestic market and is relying on improved battery technology.
Domestic demand for BYD’s electric vehicles is now about double what the company can currently deliver, Li said, thanks to its fast-charging technology that is said to be capable of achieving a 70 percent charge in just five minutes.
Sales of gasoline-powered cars in China fell 39% in May from a year earlier, the CPCA said on Monday, citing the impact of higher oil prices amid ongoing hostilities in the Middle East.
Looking ahead, Li expects the next phase of competition will likely focus on driver assistance features.
BYD expanded insurance coverage for “L2+” driver assistance users on May 28, which Li said could increase customer utilization by 5 percentage points to at least 95%. The company also introduced its own driver assistance chip.
Li said BYD will largely use Nvidia’s driver-assistance chipsets for now, although the automaker employs about 7,000 engineers for semiconductor development. That’s just a fraction of the more than 869,600 workers the automaker employs, according to its 2025 annual report.
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Leon Cheng, head of the mobility practice at YCP, an Asia-focused consulting firm, pointed out that despite a rebound in May, BYD’s overall sales remained essentially flat year-on-year.
“The question is not only whether BYD can maintain its leadership position in China,” he said, “but also whether it can defend its position globally as more Chinese EV suppliers compete aggressively in export markets.”
In May, BYD sold nearly three times more cars in China than the second-largest automaker as measured by sales of new energy vehicles, association data showed, halting an eight-month streak of declining sales.
BYD struggled to grow locally and instead turned to export markets to boost sales.
Li said the automaker wants to produce 75% of cars sold in Europe locally. She rejected allegations by a New York-based regulator of labor rights violations in the construction of BYD’s factory in Hungary, adding that the European Commission had not yet investigated the site.
The EU said last month that the case fell under the jurisdiction of Hungarian labor authorities.
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