BEIJING - BYD has slashed its sales target for this year by as much as 16 per cent to 4.6 million vehicles, two people with knowledge of the matter said, as the Chinese EV giant faces its slowest annual growth in five years and other signs that its era of record-setting expansion could be drawing to a close.
China's largest automaker told analysts in March it was targeting sales of 5.5 million vehicles for 2025. But internally, the number has been downgraded multiple times in recent months, according to the people.
The target remains subject to change depending on market conditions, the people added.
The cut comes as BYD feels the heat from growing competition with rivals such as Geely Auto and Leapmotor. Last week, BYD reported a 30 per cent drop in quarterly profit, its first decline in more than three years.
BYD did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest target is below several recently lowered forecasts from analysts. This week Deutsche Bank said it expected BYD to sell 4.7 million vehicles while Morningstar said it expected 4.8 million.
The new target represents a 7 per cent increase from 2024 sales and would be the slowest annual growth since 2020, when sales fell by 7 per cent.
The pared-back outlook also speaks to the deflationary pressure weighing on the world's second-largest economy, where domestic demand has been hit by a prolonged housing downturn. In the first eight months of 2025, BYD has only met some 52 per cent of its original 5.5 million vehicle sales target.
In just a few years, BYD has transformed itself from an EV upstart to one of the world's most important automakers by doing much of its production in-house, allowing it to keep a lid on costs even as it rolls out cutting-edge features.
Its sales of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids grew ten-fold between 2020 and 2024, to 4.3 million vehicles, putting it on par with General Motors and Ford in terms of global sales.
Yet it is now showing undeniable signs of a slowdown, especially in its main market China, which accounts for almost 80 per cent of its sales and is in the midst of a bruising, years-old price war. BYD has slowed production and delayed capacity expansion at its Chinese factories, Reuters reported in June.
BYD's sales of economy cars - those that go for under 150,000 yuan (S$27,000) and make up the bulk of its domestic sales - fell 9.6 per cent in July versus 2024, according to Reuters' analysis of its filing and a sales breakdown by Chinese auto data platform DATADIC.
By comparison, Geely's sales of cars in that price segment jumped 90 per cent year on year in July.
Geely raised its annual sales target for 2025 to 3 million vehicles from 2.71 million, its executives said during an August earnings conference.
BYD's production slid for a second straight month in August, marking its first consecutive monthly contraction since 2020. REUTERS