BYD sales hit a record in August despite broader China EV slowdown

BEIJING — Chinese electric car giant BYD sold a record number of passenger vehicles in August, with sales of hybrids growing faster than those of battery-only cars.

The company said August sales rose by 30% year-on-year to 370,854 passenger cars.

Its sales of battery-only cars rose by nearly 12%, while hybrid-powered vehicle sales surged by 48% to account for just under two-thirds of BYD cars sold last month.

In contrast, several new energy vehicle startups saw a dip in deliveries last month.

Li Auto, best known for its range-extender vehicles, reported 48,122 deliveries in August, down from a record 51,000 in July.

Aito, which uses Huawei technology, said it delivered 31,216 cars last month, down by more than 10,000 vehicles from the prior month. Huawei is selling the Aito trademark and patents to automaker Seres for 2.5 billion yuan ($352.5 million).

Nio said it delivered 20,176 cars in August, down slightly from July but above 20,000 for a fourth-straight month.

The company’s lower-priced brand Onvo opened 105 stores on Sunday as it prepares to begin for deliveries for its first car, the L60 SUV, this month. Nio is scheduled to report earnings on Friday.

Xpeng reported 14,036 car deliveries in August, its best month for the year so far.

The company said on Friday it began some deliveries of its newly launched, mass market Mona M03 electric car that sells for the equivalent of less than $20,000 in China. It was not clear whether those M03 deliveries were included in the total figure Xpeng reported.

Geely-backed Zeekr reported a month-on-month increase to 18,015 deliveries in August, but that was down from 20,206 deliveries in June.

Zeekr on Friday said it would launch its first SUV this month with a price more than $1,400 lower than Tesla‘s Model Y. The U.S.-listed Chinese company said it aims to deliver the SUV globally by the end of this year, but did not specify which countries or regions.

BYD said it sold 31,451 cars overseas last month, pushing the year-to-date total to 264,869 and above the 242,765 cars it sold abroad for all of last year.

If BYD keeps up its average monthly overseas sales pace through the end of December, the company will sell just under 400,000 cars outside China this year, according to CNBC calculations.

Xiaomi only said it delivered more than 10,000 cars in August for a third-straight month. In mid-July, CEO Lei Jun said the company aimed to deliver 100,000 units of its SU7 electric sedan by the end of November.

That indicates Xiaomi needs to deliver an average of at least 16,000 cars a month from August to November, according to CNBC calculations of reported data.

The smartphone company began mass deliveries of the SU7 in April at a price about $4,000 less than Tesla’s Model 3.

—CNBC’s Sonia Heng contributed to this report.