Leaked email signals BYD’s plan to heat up EV price war

According to a leaked letter circulating on social media yesterday, BYD has asked its suppliers to accept price cuts in the coming year – a major signal that the Chinese EV maker is gearing up to intensify the price war in China even further, all while pushing harder into Europe and other markets.

A screenshot of an email from BYD circulated on Weibo yesterday, according to Reuters, demanding “10% price cuts from an unnamed supplier from January.”

BYD’s PR and branding director Li Yunfei responded to the leak in a Weibo post: “Annual bargaining with suppliers is a common practice in the automotive industry,” according to Bloomberg. “We put forward price reduction targets to suppliers. They’re not mandatory requirements. We can negotiate.”

For the past two years or so, BYD has been leading the charge in an intense price war in China, pushing smaller companies to the edge while forcing consolidation.  

In response, Volkswagen and Stellantis have teamed up with Chinese brands Xpeng and Zhejiang Leapmotor to build EVs, while EV maker HiPhi and Shanghai-based WM Motor have filed for bankruptcy, Bloomberg reports.

Leaked email from BYD signals its plan to intensify price war

Meanwhile, BYD is looking large and in charge. It’s currently ramping up production by close to 200,000 units to meet demand, and the company has hired nearly 200,000 new employees over the past three months. Earlier this year, the company led a fresh round of industry-wide price cuts, aggressively slashing prices on its best-selling models, and in turn, gained market share and pushed weaker rivals even further to the brink.

BYD is China’s best-selling car brand, having sold some 3.2 million plug-in hybrids and BEVs this year, including a record-breaking 500K million vehicles in October. Its cars account for more than one-third of the total sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids in China this year.

By the end of this year, it looks to be on track to selling an incredible 4 million units.

In the July-September quarter, BYD’s net profit rose to 11.6 billion yuan ($1.63 billion). Also, third-quarter revenue was up 24% on year $28.24 billion, which outpaced major rival Tesla’s for the first time. Tesla’s revenue for the July-September quarter reached $25.2 billion.

BYD still sells more than 90% of its vehicles in China, but it is pushing hard into Europe and other markets, despite higher tariffs. The automaker is looking to double exports to 450,000 vehicles this year.

Photo credit: BYD

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