Beijing, September 4, 2025 — China’s electric vehicle (EV) leader BYD Co Ltd has sharply revised its 2025 sales target down by 16% to 4.6 million vehicles, signalling the company’s slowest annual growth in half a decade. The downgrade underscores the growing headwinds facing the world’s largest EV market, where competition has intensified amid an economic slowdown.
The revised target falls short of analyst projections, including Deutsche Bank’s forecast of 4.7 million units and Morningstar’s 4.8 million, though it still represents a modest 7% increase over 2024’s sales. BYD had originally aimed for 5.5 million vehicles this year but has quietly lowered its internal forecast multiple times in recent months to better align with supplier guidance and production planning.
While BYD declined to comment, sources close to the company attributed the move to mounting price wars and rival gains, particularly from Geely Auto and Leapmotor.
First Profit Decline in Three Years
The revised sales outlook comes on the heels of BYD’s 30% drop in quarterly profit, its first decline in more than three years, reflecting both eroding margins and weaker consumer demand. In the first eight months of 2025, the automaker had delivered just 52% of its initial 5.5 million-vehicle target, leaving little room to close the gap in the final months of the year.
Economists point to deflationary pressures in China’s broader economy, where a prolonged property slump has depressed household spending, particularly on big-ticket items such as cars.
From Boom to Slowdown
Between 2020 and 2024, BYD transformed itself from a niche EV maker into a global automotive heavyweight, with sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles surging tenfold to 4.3 million units. The company’s vertically integrated model—producing batteries, chips, and core components in-house—helped drive scale and reduce costs, catapulting it to parity with global giants like General Motors and Ford.
But signs of fatigue are becoming clear in BYD’s core Chinese market, which accounts for nearly 80% of its total sales. The company has slowed production and postponed capacity expansions at several plants.
Price War Intensifies
China’s EV market has been locked in a fierce price war since 2023, with automakers cutting prices aggressively to defend market share. The impact has been especially acute in the budget EV segment priced below 150,000 yuan (US$21,000), where BYD’s sales fell 9.6% year-on-year in July, even as Geely’s sales surged by 90% in the same category.
Production figures highlight the strain: BYD’s output fell for the second consecutive month in August, marking its first back-to-back monthly contraction since 2020.
Despite these setbacks, industry observers note that BYD remains well-positioned globally, thanks to its expanding footprint in Southeast Asia, Europe, and Latin America, as well as its strong technology pipeline in battery efficiency and hybrid systems. However, whether the company can reignite growth momentum in the face of domestic challenges remains a pressing question.
