The Atto 3 alone accounted for over 40% of BYD’s overall sales in foreign markets last year.
While the big news for BYD with regards to sales is its recent overtaking of Tesla in the global EV sales ranking, there has nevertheless been one greater achievement that has largely been overlooked. And that is for the Chinese automaker to have experienced a staggering 336% increase in overseas deliveries for 2023, rising from only exporting 55,656 vehicles in 2022 to 242,759 units in this past year.
Delving deeper into the figures a bit more, exports for BYD grew from only accounting for 3% of its sales in 2022 to 8.1 in 2023. Another interesting statistic extracted from the data meanwhile is that of the 242,759 cars it sold outside of its home market, 86.9% were fully-electric vehicles (89.1%), while the other 31,696 were PHEVs that accounting for the remaining 13.1%.
Though perhaps most interesting in terms of the information gleaned from this export data is which BYD model was the most popular overseas. And as perhaps alluded to in the title of this article already, that honour goes to the Atto 3 e-crossover.
Now the fact that the Atto 3 should take the top spot in BYD’s export rankings may perhaps not be entirely unsurprising, given that it is designated as the automaker’s primary export model after all. That said, it is nevertheless still an impressive feat for the 100,020 units of e-crossover sold worldwide to account for over 4 in every 10 cars BYD has sold overseas last year, with of course more than a few of them arriving over in Malaysia too.
And speaking of BYDs that have arrived in Malaysia, the second-best export model for the Chinese automaker is to be its Dolphin. Over 74,884 units of this fully-electric hatchback made its way around the world last year, with this export figure made all the more impressive when taking into account that it only went on sale in most markets towards the back end of last year. So there might be a chance yet for the Dolphin to snatch the export crown from its Atto 3 big brother in this coming 12 months.
Rounding up the export podium places meanwhile is BYD’s Song Plus, with 28,182 units delivered internationally in 2023. Available as both a pure EV and PHEV, this large SUV is apparently to be rather popular in the Latin American region, with it even charting as one of the best-selling electrified vehicles in Brazil at one point last year.
Looking further down from the top 3 now, coming in as the fourth best-selling BYD export in 2023 was its Seal. Another one of the Chinese automaker’s primary export models, the rather meagre 23,606 units of this Tesla Model 3 rival delivered to customers outside of China was primarily due to it only being available in a few markets last year. Malaysia for instance only set to see this sleek sedan landing over here in the next few months.
While on the topic of being hampered by limited overseas launches in 2023 too, BYD’s Seagull city car only comes in sixth place on the export chart with 4,016 units sold, despite its ultra affordable price tag. This though will soon likely change with its eventual introduction in the wider Latin American region later this year, and perhaps even the slightest chance of Malaysian introduction too within the next 12 months…
The full list of BYD exports in 2023 are as follows:
- Atto 3: 100,020 units
- Dolphin: 74,884 units
- Song Plus: 28,182 units
- Seal: 23,606 units
- Destroyer 05: 4,241 units
- Seagull: 4,016 units
- E6: 2,504 units
- Han: 2,462 units
- Tang: 1,910 units
*BYD’s Yuan Pro, D1, E2, and Qin Plus accounted for a cumulative export total of 934 units
