China’s BYD tops EV sales, outpaces Tesla for 1st time

The number of registered electric vehicles surpassed 10 million in 2022, as the EV industry continued its upward trend with the Chinese market’s strong growth, a report showed Monday.

According to market tracker SNE Research, global EV registrations increased by 61.3 percent on year in 2022 to reach 10.83 million.

The report said BYD, a Chinese EV maker, grew by 205 percent on-year to account for 17.3 percent of the global EV market and also became the biggest EV seller in the world, as the brand logged 1.87 million registered EVs.

Although Tesla, the US EV giant that held the top spot in 2021, showed 40 percent on-year growth, the electric automaker slipped to second place with 12.1 percent market share last year.

Geely, another Chinese EV maker, was the only other company in the top ten to have posted triple-digit growth rate along with BYD. According to the report, EV sales in China jumped 97.1 percent on-year to 6.56 million units, whereas EV markets in the US and Europe grew by 49.8 percent and 11.2 percent on-year, respectively.

Hyundai Motor and Kia grew 41 percent on year, but South Korean automakers’ overall market share fell to 4.7 percent from the previous year’s 5.4 percent. Hyundai Motor Group fell to sixth place on the list behind Geely.

Meanwhile, cumulative US sales of Hyundai Motor Group’s EVs reached 100,000 units as of January, according to industry sources. The Korean automaker achieved the milestone about eight years after selling its first such vehicle in the US -- the Kia Soul EV -- in 2014.

Hyundai’s EV sales began to show noticeable growth as the automaker’s small sport utility vehicles, such as the Hyundai Kona Electric and Kia Niro EV, hit the US market in 2019. The number of Hyundai’s US EV sales logged nearly 20,000 in 2021. After the automaker’s awards-winning EVs -- Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6 and Genesis GV60 -- were released in the US last year, the company’s yearly figure jumped to 58,028 in 2022.

According to InsideEVs, Hyundai Motor Group ranked third in the US EV market with a 7.1 percent market share, following Tesla and Ford. The automaker has laid out the goal of selling over 130,000 EVs in the US this year with new models -- Hyundai Ioniq 6, Kia EV9 and Genesis GV70 -- set to be released throughout the course of the year.