BYD doubles exports – Swiss sales grow strongly
The Chinese manufacturer is selling more vehicles worldwide. Its growth in Switzerland has so far rested mostly on cars with both a combustion and an electric motor.
BYD is growing abroad markedly faster than in its overall business. The Chinese carmaker sold 490,168 vehicles worldwide in October, eleven percent more than a year earlier. Deliveries to overseas markets rose by 102.8 percent to 170,194 vehicles. Reuters reported this on Sunday, 1 November, citing a company publication.
BYD thus extended its run of six consecutive months with sales growth against the previous year. Growth did slow, however: in September the increase had still been 17 percent. Reuters describes the foreign markets as a counterweight to weak demand and intense price competition in China.
Arithmetically, the export volume equals just under 35 percent of worldwide October sales. The two totals do not show where those vehicles went individually. Nor do they say how many cars have already been handed over to end customers. For the Swiss market, domestic new registrations are therefore the closer point of comparison.
Swiss growth is mainly hybrid
For January to September, BYD Switzerland reports 4,568 new registrations and a market share of 2.6 percent. The company release published on 7 October puts the increase on the same period a year earlier at 784 percent. In September alone there were 715 vehicles and a 3.3 percent market share. These figures come from the manufacturer; they are not a new Swiss October balance.
According to company statements, around 60 percent of its Swiss new registrations were plug-in hybrids and around 40 percent fully electric vehicles. The SEAL U DM-i is said to have led the ranking of plug-in hybrid models both in September and over the first nine months. Among pure electric cars, the SEALION 7 was the most frequently registered BYD model.
Anyone who equates the brand solely with battery-electric cars therefore misses a substantial part of its Swiss business. Plug-in hybrids have a combustion engine alongside the electric motor and can be charged from the grid. Their registrations do not belong in the same category as those of cars that run exclusively on battery power.
The overall market is shifting towards pure electric cars
Across the market as a whole the ratio is different. According to the importers' association auto-schweiz, in September 35.7 percent of new passenger cars were purely electric and 10.3 percent were plug-in hybrids. A total of 21,948 passenger cars were newly registered. The statistics cover Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein.
Since the start of the year, the overall market at the end of September stood 2.7 percent above the weak previous year. BYD's high growth rate is therefore not simply the expression of an equally strongly growing car market. At the same time, its share of the overall market remains far smaller than the triple-digit percentage increase might suggest. Percentage growth and market weight are different quantities.
More exports are not yet a Swiss price cut
No particular discount for Swiss buyers follows from the Chinese sales figures. The legal import conditions here are also a separate matter. Switzerland set its industrial tariffs to zero on 1 January 2024, irrespective of the origin of the goods and the delivery route. That also applies to cars. The abolition did not, however, remove other charges: according to the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security, automobile tax is in principle four percent of the vehicle value; VAT also remains payable.
Whether additional export volumes push down Swiss selling prices would therefore have to be shown by concrete offers and price changes. A global sales increase is no substitute for that. Nor does it allow any conclusion about which Swiss equipment variants are immediately available.
For its appearance at the Zurich show, BYD also announces a demonstration of its FLASH charging technology with up to 1,500 kilowatts. That is a manufacturer's figure for charging power. It does not mean that all models sold here can use that power or that corresponding charging stations are already available nationwide. According to BYD, the current Swiss model list comprises five fully electric and four plug-in hybrid models. The announced charging technology must therefore be considered separately from the existing range.
The next verifiable expansion of the range is already due: BYD has announced two new models for the media evening of Auto Zürich on 4 November. The public days run from 5 to 8 November. Which additional variants will actually come to Switzerland is to become clear at the presentation.
Sources
- BYD Switzerland: new registrations January to September 2026, 7 October
- BYD Switzerland: announcement for Auto Zürich 2026, 30 October
- auto-schweiz: new passenger cars September 2026
- SECO: abolition of industrial tariffs
- BAZG: automobile tax
- Reuters: BYD sales and exports in October, 1 November 2026
- Lead image: メイド理世, BYD Dolphin, Wikimedia Commons
- Article image: Calreyn88, BYD Seal U Boost, Wikimedia Commons
- Licence for both images: CC BY-SA 4.0
