Tesla Reigns as EV King Globally Despite Chinese Market’s Shift Towards Hybrids Amid Range Anxiety

Tesla reigns supreme in the pure electric vehicle market, however, Chinese motorists are gravitating towards hybrid cars due to concerns about driving range. Tesla declared that their net profit for the third quarter increased by 17% compared to the previous year, amounting to $2.17 billion.

The company from Austin, Texas, announced on Thursday that its worldwide vehicle deliveries for the third quarter increased by 5 per cent compared to the last quarter, reaching a total of 462,890 vehicles. This also represents a 6.3 per cent increase from the same period last year.

Tesla outperformed China's BYD in terms of pure electric vehicle (EV) sales for the third quarter in a row. In the final quarter of the previous year, the company based in Shenzhen had surpassed Tesla in the sale of pure EVs. BYD saw a sale of 443,426 pure EVs in the third quarter, which was a 2.7% increase from the same period in the previous year and a 4.1% increase from the second quarter.

In China, which has the biggest car market globally, it seems that hybrid vehicles are more popular than solely electric vehicles (EVs) due to concerns about driving distance. The China Passenger Car Association's data shows that sales of pure EVs in September increased by 29.2 per cent, selling around 644,000 units, a rise from the previous year. However, this growth was slower than the sales growth for plug-in hybrids and extended-range cars, which saw a boost of 96.7 per cent (selling about 361,000 units) and 89.1 per cent (about 111,000 units) respectively, during the same timeframe.

BYD, the global leader in the production of new-energy vehicles, credited its hybrid models for a surge in overall sales during the third quarter. The company reported global sales of 685,830 plug-in hybrid vehicles, marking a 75.6% increase from the previous year and a 23.2% rise from the second quarter. Consequently, BYD's total sales reached 1.13 million units in the third quarter, a year-on-year increase of 37.4% and a 41.9% jump from the second quarter, according to the company's statement.

As homegrown firms concentrate more on the hybrid vehicle sector, Tesla, a company that solely manufactures pure electric vehicles, is anticipated to dominate the majority of sales in China's pure electric vehicle market, states Phate Zhang, the creator of CnEVPost, an electric-car data service based in Shanghai.

"Zhang stated that the disparity in China's all-electric vehicle market between Tesla and BYD will keep growing."