BYD & Tesla Combine for 30% of Cumulative BEV Sales Globally

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Following up on the article I wrote a few days ago about BYD having 20% of cumulative plugin vehicle sales globally and Tesla having 12% of cumulative plugin vehicle sales, I wanted to figure out the same kind of figures for fully electric vehicle (BEV) sales.

Naturally, I had to turn to José Pontes to find out what cumulative BEV sales were at globally (52.3 million) as well as BYD’s cumulative BEV sales (6.968 million).

As I noted in that previous article, Tesla was at 8,464,694 cumulative deliveries at the end of the 3rd quarter. Adding another ~235,000 for October and November, I put the company at 8.7 million cumulative sales.

So, crunching the numbers, Tesla is at 16.6% of cumulative BEV sales globally. Meanwhile, BYD is at 13.3% of cumulative BEV sales. Therefore, together, they are at 29.9% of global cumulative BEV sales. Rounding up, that’s 30% of the world’s BEVs, or 3 out of every 10 BEVs on the road.

Going forward, how will these two companies do in terms of percentage of new BEV sales and cumulative BEV sales? If only we had monthly world EV sales reports to look to for some guidance. Oh, we do! The most recent world EV sales report shows that BYD was at 16.8% of the world’s BEV sales across the first 10 months of the year and Tesla was at 11.8%. So, that’s almost the same combined share — 28.6% — as it is in the cumulative figures. However, the advantage has shifted from Tesla to BYD, quite significantly.

It’ll be very interesting to see how sales in the next year play out and where the cumulative BEV split lies at the beginning of 2027. Could BYD catch up to Tesla? Can Tesla bounce back and grow its BEV share? Will Tesla and BYD still be at about 30% of BEV sales? We shall see.