Producer | He Xi typesetting | Ye Yuan
Overseas markets are becoming a new growth point for BYD.
According to media reports, since the second half of last year, BYD has occupied the "top sales" position in the pure electric vehicle market in at least four countries. For domestic user groups, it is no longer news that BYD's sales volume "dominates the screen", but it is still very exciting to maintain this momentum overseas.
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In the first half of 2023, BYD's overseas market will usher in substantial growth
In fact, every time BYD announces sales data, it always lists two sets of data for the domestic market and overseas exports. But most users are always most concerned about the things around them, so they will always ignore the relatively small export data under the light of domestic sales of over 100,000 or 200,000 vehicles. For example, in the first half of 2023 that just passed, BYD once again stood on the throne of the global new energy vehicle sales champion with a record-breaking performance.
According to official data, BYD sold 1.2556 million new energy vehicles from January to June 2023, a year-on-year increase of 95.78%. In the past June, sales exceeded the 250,000 mark for the first time, reaching 253,000 vehicles, an increase of 88.79% year-on-year. Up to now, BYD has formed the three major brands of BYD, Tengshi and Yangwang. Among them, BYD, together with Dynasty.com and Haiyang.com, dominate the market below 300,000 yuan; Tengshi brand has a firm foothold in the mid-to-high-end market of 300,000 to 500,000 yuan;
In BYD's grand market plan, domestic sales certainly occupy an important position, but overseas sales cannot be ignored either. BYD's "going to sea" began with the "passenger car going to sea" plan proposed in 2021. Since then, BYD's new energy models have successively entered Japan, Germany, Brazil, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions. By 2022, the brand's cumulative export sales will reach 55,900 vehicles, marking the start of BYD's overseas market take-off.
After entering 2023, this development momentum will accelerate again. The data shows that as of April this year, BYD's overseas sales of 53,600 vehicles have basically equaled the full-year data for 2022. By the end of June, sales in overseas markets had reached 74,300 vehicles, which was nearly 1/3 more than the total of last year, and the growth rate was astonishing.
BYD's overseas sales are not only amazing, but it has become a representative brand of new energy vehicles in some countries, and it has begun to have a subversive effect on the original automobile market. For example, in emerging markets such as Israel, Thailand, Singapore, and New Zealand, BYD has won the sales champion of pure electric vehicles from the second half of last year to the first half of this year with only one model, ATTO3.
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Behind BYD's overseas growth
From the perspective of growth rate, the most conservative estimate of BYD's overseas sales in 2023 will be more than 100% higher than that in 2022. Obviously, the growth potential of the overseas market is not inferior to that of the domestic market, and it is even very likely to surpass it quickly in the future.
Behind the surge in BYD's overseas sales, it is inseparable from BYD's emphasis on overseas markets.
In 2022, BYD will also overwhelmingly win the global new energy vehicle sales champion. Although BYD in 2022 is very vigorous, after taking the position of "true king", how to maintain the current situation, how to maintain growth, and which direction to seek growth are the problems that BYD must face.
At that time, the author pointed out that facing the pressure of growth, BYD will look for new growth in the following three directions: launching high-end models upwards, launching low-end models downwards (less than 100,000 yuan), and expanding new markets overseas.
In terms of impacting the high-end market upwards, as a new energy brand whose production and sales have already dominated the world, BYD will inevitably have the need to increase its brand value upwards. In fact, BYD has launched a brand new "Look Up" brand in the first quarter of 2023, which directly competes with the "hardcore" SUVs of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class and Land Rover Defender. This move marks that BYD has set the goal of upgrading its brand at a level comparable to BBA and catching up with Mercedes-Benz Land Rover.
Downwards is the real incremental space for BYD. The author believes that BYD will launch a variety of models below 100,000 yuan to explore the low-end market, and attack the middle and low-end market with the largest sales and revenue. Since the beginning of this year, BYD has launched a variety of "cost-effective" models, which have become popular models in the market.
In terms of going overseas, overseas markets have become an important focus of BYD's 2023 strategy.
From the perspective of the industry, the growth of BYD's overseas market is not an isolated case. In fact, in the past two years, many car companies, including GAC Aion, SAIC Motor, Chery, and Great Wall, have greatly increased their export sales. Taking January-April this year as an example, my country's auto companies exported a total of 1.37 million vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 89.2%; among them, 348,000 new energy vehicles were exported, a year-on-year increase of 1.7 times. Under the strong growth, China has surpassed Japan to become the world's largest automobile exporter. Behind this strong export performance is the entire domestic new energy vehicle industry chain playing a supporting role.
Since the country launched the new energy vehicle strategy more than ten years ago, the domestic industry has developed a complete industrial chain system. By 2023, my country will not only have a power battery company that ranks first and second in the world in terms of installed capacity, but also a number of powerful domestic companies will emerge in various aspects such as electronic control and intelligence. This industrial chain has not only supported the overseas sales of domestic car companies, but has even become a direct boost to the strong performance of the world-renowned brand Tesla in the European and American markets. It is under the nourishment of this vigorous industrial ecology that BYD has grown into a world-class car company capable of producing motors, batteries, electronic controls, and semiconductor chips, and complete vehicle manufacturing. All technologies and hardware are almost self-developed and self-produced. Therefore, it has particularly strong cost control and outstanding product research and development capabilities.
Just as Wang Chuanfu, the helm of BYD, said, "It can be used as a battery, a motor, and an electronic control. At present, BYD is the world's largest." The competitive advantages brought about by this technological advantage and cost advantage are not only the root cause of China's position as the world's largest exporter, but also the confidence for BYD's overseas growth in the future.
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BYD's overseas market will make a big difference
In the author's opinion, overseas sales of 74,300 are just the beginning, and BYD will do a lot in overseas markets in the future.
At present, the key to domestic car companies represented by BYD to increase overseas sales is to solve two bottlenecks: one is insufficient transportation capacity, and the other is the lack of local production capacity overseas. The former leads to "difficulty in delivery", and the latter causes brands to often encounter various trade barriers, which restricts sales growth. Judging from the situation from January to June this year, BYD's sales volume of 74,300 vehicles is actually still far from the current upper limit. The important constraint factor is the lack of transportation capacity, which leads to the extension of the delivery time period to overseas users. In response to this, BYD has already started to act. In 2022, BYD has ordered 8 car ro-ro ships with a loading capacity ranging from more than 7,000 to nearly 10,000 vehicles at one time, with a total cost of nearly 5 billion yuan. Once these ships are put into use, the bottleneck of BYD's "difficult delivery" will be greatly eased.
More importantly, BYD is still actively planning its production capacity layout, and has started large-scale factory construction in many overseas places. For example, on July 5, BYD and the Bahia state government of Brazil jointly announced that the two parties will set up a large-scale production base complex consisting of three factories in Brazil, with a total investment of 3 billion reais (about 4.5 billion yuan), covering the manufacture of complete vehicles, chassis and batteries. In Thailand, BYD's Rayong factory also officially laid its foundation in March this year. It is expected to start operation in 2024, with an annual production capacity of about 150,000 vehicles, and its products will mainly be launched in the local Thai market. In addition, BYD also plans to promote the construction of factories in France, Spain, Germany and other countries. When these production capacity layouts are completed and put into use, it will be the day when BYD will completely break through the bottleneck of transportation capacity and trade barriers, and overseas sales will inevitably usher in a jump.
From 2021 to the present, BYD has made a sample for domestic auto brands to go abroad in just three years. It is to win users with products with more advanced functions and better driving experience, and at the same time actively realize the localization of production capacity and service system. From the perspective of the domestic auto industry as a whole, we really need more car companies like BYD to realize the globalization of the domestic auto industry with real technological progress and industrial layout.
Judging from the development history of advanced automobile producing countries such as Japan and Germany, if a country wants to realize the global layout of its industry, it must first achieve a considerable scale effect in its own domestic market, and then gradually start its overseas journey on the basis of its scale advantage. Domestic car companies represented by BYD, Chery, SAIC, and GAC are clearly on this path. At present, they have made great progress in the domestic market, which has doubled the pressure on the joint venture car companies that once almost monopolized the domestic market share, and then began to plan to enter the overseas market. Today, several leading car companies, including BYD, have completed the "primary stage" of going overseas, which is mainly based on model export, and started the second stage of going overseas, which is typically characterized by the establishment of overseas factories and the establishment of overseas sales and service networks.
In the era of new energy vehicles, we need more BYDs to go overseas and stand firmly at the high end.