The BYD boast that shareholders didn’t like

BYD almost looks like two different car companies.

The first is seeing explosive growth, with exports up 65 per cent in the first five months of this year, compared with the same period in 2025.

The second saw domestic sales fall so much that, as a whole, deliveries are down an eye-watering 20 per cent.

Ever the optimist, BYD’s chairman Wang Chuanfu told nearly 1,000 shareholders on Jun 9 that their company would become the world’s biggest carmaker within five years.

Few seemed to share that sunny outlook.

The very next morning, BYD’s Hong Kong shares fell 4.3 per cent. They have nearly been cut in half since peaking in 2025.

Perhaps the market considers Wang’s boast too big to swallow.

To become No 1, BYD – which sold 4.6 million cars last year – has to overtake Toyota.

Toyota notched its sixth consecutive year at the top, delivering more than 11 million cars.

To be fair to Wang, BYD is not to be scoffed at.

It is comfortably the world’s largest electric vehicle brand, having trounced its American rival Tesla.

BYD is the leading EV nameplate in Britain and Indonesia, and has also topped Singapore’s charts for two years running.

The growth engines are firing up, too. Plants in Thailand and Uzbekistan are humming along, with factories in Hungary and possibly Turkey in the works, ostensibly to put BYD on the correct side of trade blocs.

In contrast to Wang’s optimism, Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda has looked glum.

The day before BYD’s shareholder meeting, he told British website Carwow that he feels “very alone” defending hybrids and combustion engines against the industry’s rush to EVs – a long-held position that has led many to mock him as a denialist.

Ironically, for all its success with EVs, BYD is busy diversifying from them.

Plug-in hybrids are so hot in China that they have become one of the most reliable paths to profitability for carmakers there. They also slip through the EU’s anti-subsidy tariffs, which apply only to battery-electric cars.

If BYD does eventually overtake Toyota, the irony is that it may do so by proving chairman Toyoda’s hybrid bet right, not wrong.

Yet, BYD’s immediate challenges are not from Japan. Its lead at home is under serious threat from Geely. Xiaomi, a tech company, is also stealing its thunder with sharper tech and rapid iteration.

Rivals are making similar strides overseas.

Chery’s Jaecoo 7 was the UK’s top-selling car in March. Shanghai Auto’s MG outsells BYD in Europe. GWM has cumulatively exported two million cars – half a million last year alone.

A 100 per cent tariff keeps the US market – Toyota’s biggest – shut to Chinese EVs.

BYD’s best hope rests in the low-hanging fruit of markets that are in relatively early stages of EV adoption, such as South-east Asia (where exports grew 130 per cent in 2025), the Middle East (up 60 per cent) and Latin America (up 55 per cent).

Meanwhile, it would be folly to imagine that Toyota will lie down in the face of BYD’s aggression.

The Japanese brand is finally ramping up its rollout of EVs, and just had its best year yet with them.

Even so, pure EVs accounted for less than 3 per cent of Toyota’s total volume. It, too, has low-hanging fruit to pick.