BYD says EVs may soon take 80% of China’s new car market, as national adoption roars

China’s largest EV maker thinks the country’s shift to electric still has room to run — even after EVs have already roared in recent years to account for more than half of the country’s new car sales.

On Monday, BYD Executive VP Stella Li told CNBC that China’s market could “very quickly” push close to 80% EV penetration, helped by new technology in the space and a growing wave of electric options. That would be another significant leap for a nation that the International Energy Agency says has already grown at an “extremely rapid” pace over the past five years.

In 2020, China barely registered among the world’s EV leaders by sales share, with electric cars taking just 6% of new car sales that year, according to IEA data. Just five years later, that share has surged to 53%, putting China behind only a handful of early adopters, where years of tax breaks and purchase incentives have helped push EV adoption higher.

In the driver’s seat

China’s not just been climbing the adoption ranks either — it’s also supercharged the global market, accounting for six out of every 10 EVs sold worldwide last year and more than half of the global increase in EV sales. That’s even more striking given that domestic growth slowed slightly at one point last year, after a trade-in subsidy (paying consumers to swap old cars for new EVs) was temporarily halted.

The nation’s been sending more of its electric vehicles abroad, too, with China’s EV exports in Q1 surging 78% from the same quarter last year, per official data cited by CNN. At the same time, BYD’s new car registrations in Europe jumped 115% in April from a year earlier, outpacing Tesla’s 47%.

The US, meanwhile, is moving far slower: electric cars still account for around 10% of new car sales, with the market under pressure from weaker policy support, expired federal tax credits, and limited access to cheaper Chinese models.