Market Insight: BYD’s Aussie Shuffle

BYD’s Australian presence has grown steadily since the Chinese car-maker launched its Atto 3 electric compact SUV here in July 2022, although the introduction of another three models from late 2023 onwards has so far served more to stabilise sales than send them skyward.

Year-to-date sales of 15,181 units represent a 74.4 per cent increase over the same period of 2023, largely due to tapering sales of what was BYD’s only offering in the second half of last year.

The bounceback came courtesy of the Dolphin small hatchback last October and the Seal medium sedan in December, with February 2024 marking the first time BYD sales in Australia exceeded June 2023 when the Atto 3 single-handedly shifted 1532 units.

For the past couple of months, the brand’s sales mix has been heavily skewed toward the Sealion 6 plug-in hybrid medium SUV that arrived in June and snaffled a 5.6 per cent segment share in September with 1111 deliveries, outselling stalwarts including the Subaru Forester (1047 units) and Nissan X-Trail (995) while surpassing the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV as Australia’s most popular plug-in hybrid.

The success of the Sealion 6 seems to have taken the shine off the initially popular Seal sedan among BYD buyers, the Tesla Model 3 rival dipping from a May 2024 peak of 1002 deliveries to just 275 last month.

Similarly, since April this year, Atto 3 sales have shrunk to a fraction of their mid-2023 peaks when the crossover was still BYD’s sole offering here with deliveries surpassing 1000 units for five consecutive months.

After an initial 500-unit burst for the Dolphin when the initial shipment landed last November, the model has been fairly consistent in earning a couple of hundred sales each month for BYD – around double that of GWM’s quirky Ora hatch but less than half the throughput enjoyed by the similar-sized MG 4.

VFACTS data from November 2022 (when BYD began officially reporting sales volumes) suggests the brand could be onto a good thing by plugging into the petrol-electric medium SUV zeitgeist as the Sealion 6 accounted for more than half of all BYD deliveries in August and September this year, pushing the brand to a record 2021 units in August.

The Sealion 6 looks on track to become at least as popular as the Atto 3 was in its 1500-units-a-month heyday of May-June 2023 just as BYD expands into the highly competitive 4x4 dual-cab ute market with the Shark 6, scheduled for release late this month, that will set a segment precedent with its plug-in hybrid drivetrain.

Entering a category long dominated by the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger (itself due to gain a plug-in hybrid next year), BYD’s entry into this space signals a bold move that could further broaden BYD’s appeal among Australian families and businesses, especially if leaked pricing for the powerful and highly specified Shark 6 proves accurate at $68K – lineball with up-spec mainstream diesel dual-cabs such as the Isuzu D-Max X-Terrain.

Whether this results in incremental sales gains – as has so far been the case with the Dolphin small hatch, Seal and to a lesser extent the Sealion 6 – remains to be seen but BYD’s big talk about its big ambitions for this market has so far been at odds with the data, which suggests that offering a range of models catering to different buyer needs has enabled it to keep growing gradually rather than delivering dramatic jumps.