BYD sales down in March, Xi’an factory construction to continue

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BYD have had some good news and bad news in March, putting the good news first is that Xi’an City Government have returned the land confiscated by them to BYD this week. The land was confiscated when BYD attempted to build on it, the land was originally set aside for agricultural use but they have since rezoned the land for industrial use, meaning BYD can continue with plant building. One of BYD’s major issues has been that its cars are in demand, but they cannot be built quick enough leading to long delivery times, this is sending potential consumers over to rival dealerships.

The bad news for BYD is that sales in March were down by 41% over a year earlier, but at least they were up 51% over February’s sales (although February was technically only half a month due to the dealerships being closed for Chinese new year. BYD cleared sales of 40,027 vehicles in March, which can be broken down as follows:

• F3 – 15,324
• F0 – 13,324
• G3 – 6,889
• F6 – 2,537
• L3 – 1,683
• M6 – 167
• F3DM – 74

The big news is obviously that BYD managed to clear a further 74 units of the F3 DM, a plugin hybrid sedan. BYD is aiming for 10% growth in 2011 with a goal of 550,000 vehicles. BYD’s January sales stood at 52,054 units, February sales were at 26,521 and with March sales at a reported 40,027 vehicles which so far brings BYD’s sales total to 118,602, leaving 431,398 cars to be sold over the next 8 months, BYD needs to be selling an average of 53,924 cars over the April to December period if it is to hit that 550,000 sales goal.