- BYD says it’ll be the largest automaker on Earth in just five years.
- Toyota is the reigning champ of the global auto market, but it’s been slow the launch compelling EVs.
- Last year, BYD sold around 4.6 million vehicles, which is less than half of Toyota’s global sales figure.
After dominating its home market, Chinese automaker BYD has a new goal in mind: becoming the largest car company in the entire world.
The automaker’s chairman told investors that the brand’s ambition hasn’t subsided despite declining sales (and share prices) at home. That would mean not only recapturing market share back from increasing competition at home, but also expanding its global footprint to take on the old guard like Toyota and Volkswagen.
Photo by: BYD
“BYD will truly become the number one automaker globally in terms of scale in five years,” said BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu when speaking with shareholders at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Shenzhen.
BYD—which debuted its first in-house-developed car in 2005 and first battery-electric car in 2009—sold around 4.6 million vehicles last year. That solidified the brand as the sixth-largest automaker by volume, which is less than half the number of cars that Toyota sold during the same time.
Increasing domestic competition has forced Chinese automakers to look outside of their home markets for growth.
Using this method, BYD increased its annual exports by 65% year-over-year in 2025 and plans to continue that all-out assault by selling 1.5 million cars abroad in 2026. In fact, one of the ways that BYD and other brands usurped some of Toyota’s market share is by encroaching on Toyota’s sales territory in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, reports Reuters.
Europe is one of BYD’s biggest takeover targets—that should come as no surprise. But something that might hit a bit closer to home is how BYD is targeting strategic growth in North America. Mexico saw a huge uptick in BYD imports last year, and Canada is next on the automaker’s list, especially with over half of Canadians interested in buying a Chinese EV.
The U.S. government is getting a bit concerned, too.
This week, it added BYD to its Section 1260H list. This action effectively labels BYD as a company with ties to the Chinese military (along with Alibaba, Baidu, NIO, and others) and prevents BYD from securing any contracts with the U.S. government.
From the Pentagon’s report:
BYD is a military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base because it is affiliated with MIIT (China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) and because it resides in or is affiliated with a military-civil fusion enterprise zone.
That’s not going to matter for sales figures in the short term. The automaker doesn’t currently sell any passenger cars in the U.S., after all. Instead, this is a reputation stain for BYD that the company says it won’t stand for.
“BYD is not a company that can be pushed around,” said Stella Li, who serves as President of BYD North America and Executive Vice President of BYD. Li went on to say that the automaker plans to use its “legal weapons” to protect itself.
It’s clear that BYD’s response to the U.S. is meant to show the world that it won’t be bullied amid its ambitious goal of becoming the largest automaker on the planet. The Pentagon also wants to give the world a reminder—that becoming an automotive superpower comes with baggage.
The larger BYD (or any foreign automaker) gets, the harder it is to separate the company from the country. That’s especially true when that company is threatening one of the most critical markets in the U.S. with cheaper, competitive cars that can’t even be sold here.
