BYD, Li Auto break sales records again as pent-up demand benefits top marques - South China Morning Post

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Li Auto and BYD, two of China’s top electric vehicle (EV) marques, broke monthly sales records in August as they benefited from a release of pent-up demand in the world’s largest EV market.

Li Auto, a Beijing-headquartered premium EV maker seen as the nearest domestic competitor to US carmaker Tesla in China, handed 34,914 cars to customers in August, beating a previous all-time high of 34,134 EV deliveries in July. It has now set a monthly sales record for a fifth month in a row.

“We delivered a robust performance in August with monthly deliveries for each of Li L7, Li L8 and Li L9 surpassing 10,000 vehicles, as an increasing number of family users recognise and trust our products,” Li Xiang, the marque’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement on Friday. “The popularity of these three Li ‘L series’ models has solidified our sales leadership position in both China’s new-energy vehicle and premium vehicle markets.”

Shenzhen-based BYD, which does not compete with Tesla directly but dethroned it as the world’s largest EV assembler last year, sold 274,386 EVs last month, an increase of 4.7 per cent from 262,161 car deliveries in July. The carmaker rewrote its monthly delivery record for a fourth consecutive month in August, it said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Friday.

A BYD EV in Yokohama, Japan is seen in this file photo from last month. The carmaker sold 274,386 EVs in China in August. Photo: Bloomberg

A price war initiated by Tesla late last year came to an end in May, unleashing a wave of demand from customers who had sat out the bargains bonanza in the hope that steeper discounts were on the way, making top carmakers like Li Auto and BYD the top beneficiaries.

Li Auto, Shanghai-based Nio and Guangzhou-headquartered Xpeng are viewed as China’s best response to Tesla in the premium segment. They have been largely eclipsed by the US carmaker since 2020, when Tesla’s Shanghai-based Gigafactory 3 became operational. But the Chinese carmakers have been closing in on Elon Musk’s EV giant over the past two years.

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“The gap between Tesla and its Chinese rivals is narrowing because new models by Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto are luring some customers away from the US company,” said Tian Maowei, a sales manager at Yiyou Auto Service in Shanghai. “Chinese brands have displayed their design capabilities and technological strengths by building a new generation of EVs that are more autonomous and have better entertainment features.”

In July, the Shanghai Gigafactory delivered 31,423 EVs to Chinese customers, a 58 per cent decline from the 74,212 cars delivered a month earlier, according to the latest China Passenger Car Association data. Exports of Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y EVs, however, rose 69 per cent month on month to 32,862 units in July.

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Nio’s sales volume, meanwhile, dropped 5.5 per cent to 19,329 EVs in August, but it was still the carmaker’s second-highest monthly sales tally since its founding in 2014.

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Xpeng sold 13,690 vehicles last month, an increase of 24.4 per cent from a month earlier. It was the company’s highest monthly sales tally since June 2022.

Xpeng’s G6 sport utility vehicle, launched in June, has limited auto­nomous driving capabilities and can navigate the streets of China’s leading cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, using Xpeng’s X navigation guided pilot software, which is similar to Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) system. FSD has not been approved by Chinese authorities.

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BYD, Li Auto break sales records again as pent-up demand benefits top marques - South China Morning Post
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