BYD Chief Says Company Will Overtake Toyota Within Five Years

BYD was the world’s sixth-largest automaker last year, but the company is not satisfied merely building more cars than Ford. BYD wants to become the world’s largest automaker, overtaking the Volkswagen Group and Toyota. Company chairman Wang Chuanfu said the brand could become the world’s largest automaker within the next five years. Carscoops reported on Thursday local time that Wang disclosed this at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Shenzhen, stating that the new second-generation Blade Battery would be key to the company’s expansion. “BYD will truly become the number one global automaker within the next five years,” he said. Making such a bold statement is, of course, far easier than actually becoming the world’s largest automaker. It is likely the BYD boss drew inspiration from Elon Musk’s strategy, making such pronouncements to bolster the automaker’s share price, which has fallen more than 45 per cent over the past year. BYD needs to grow extremely rapidly over the next five years to achieve its goal. Last year, the brand sold 4.6 million vehicles, less than half of the 11.21 million sold by Toyota Motor Corporation if Lexus and Daihatsu are included. Toyota itself sold 9.6 million cars last year, so to rival it, BYD would need to increase its sales by 1 million units each year for the next five years. That would be an extraordinarily difficult task. This goal will be affected by the widespread slowdown across China, which has decelerated BYD’s growth in its domestic market. In May, the company sold 207,372 vehicles in China alone, a 29.2 per cent decline compared to the same period last year. To offset lower demand in its home country, BYD must rapidly expand into new international markets, with Canada expected to be one of the most important.