DgcityBYD, the world’s largest maker of electric vehicles, has raised its overseas sales forecast for this year by roughly 40 percent, pushing harder into foreign markets as demand at home cools and price competition eats into margins. The company now expects to sell about 1.8 million vehicles outside mainland China in 2026.
That figure, outlined by BYD’s brand and public-affairs chief Li Yunfei, compares with an original target of 1.3 million set at the start of the year and with the 1.04 million vehicles the company actually sold abroad in 2025. If achieved, it would mark a 73 percent jump in international sales in a single year.
The shift rewrites BYD’s balance sheet. Exports represented just 3 percent of total sales in 2022, rose to 22.6 percent last year and reached roughly 40 percent in the first ten months of 2026, putting the company within reach of the 50 percent overseas share that chairman Wang Chuanfo set as a goal two years ago. China remains BYD’s largest operation, but foreign buyers are no longer a rounding error in its results.
The international push is as much about profitability as volume. BYD has begun offering premium models abroad rather than relying only on the compact, aggressively priced cars that first introduced the brand to European drivers. A vehicle from its high-end Denza brand, introduced in Britain in July, was priced locally at the equivalent of about 1.3 million yuan, roughly three times its Chinese price tag, giving the company far richer margins than it earns at home.
The strategy is not without friction. European regulators have imposed anti-subsidy tariffs on Chinese-built EVs, and BYD faces intensifying scrutiny over everything from factory data practices in Hungary to its supply chain. Even so, the company has kept building plants abroad and expanding into Southeast Asia, Australia and Latin America, using its in-house battery technology and vertically integrated production to undercut legacy manufacturers on cost.
The raised target also tells a broader story about China’s economy. With domestic consumer spending subdued and the property market still weak, the country’s manufacturers are increasingly leaning on foreign sales of higher-value products — EVs, batteries and related hardware — to keep factories running. BYD’s assembly lines have not slowed; they are simply pointing more of their output toward buyers outside China.
