BYD Passenger Car Deliveries : 2026 (Q1)

BYD has recently been flying high. Massive increases in deliveries have been so large that it was hard to comprehend the scale of it all. It always had to hit a ceiling sometime but when?

Q4 2025 gave a hint of what might have been coming, but sometimes quarterly figures can be aberrations rather than solid trends. A slow down of car sales and aggressive competition in China suggested the latter. Q1 2026 seems to confirm that Q4 '25 wasn't going to be an exception. 

Deliveries of electric cars were down 25% when comparing quarters. Q2 2020 was the last time a drop percentagewise was greater. When adding hybrid cars, a similar drop (-29%) was recorded. 

With domestic deliveries suffering, overseas markets are being pursued. They are now reaching 40% of the total, which is the highest it has been. 1.5 million units for overseas deliveries is the target BYD has set for 2026.    

Data source: BYD. Picture source: BYD (BYD Dolphin & Denza B8).

Tesla Deliveries & Production Figures : 2026 (Q1)

Tesla Q1 deliveries were up 6% to 358,000 and production increased 13% to 408,400. That puts production 14% higher than deliveries. So just over 50,000 units were made than were sold. That's an inventory build up that needs to be sorted and maybe that is soon to be addressed. 

So it is good that volumes are up on 2025, although 2023 and 2024 both exceeded Q1 2026 totals. Future quarters will tell us more as one quarter in isolation could be misleading. 

Data & photo source: Tesla.