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Cash bonanza set to cheer BYD dealers

BYD, which outsold Tesla in electric car sales globally for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2023, will hand out rewards totaling billions of yuan to its Chinese dealers. The automaker will pay 666 yuan ($93) per car to dealers if they have achieved their sales targets for 2023. The number 666 is considered auspicious in China since the number sounds like the word amazing. In total, BYD is estimated to pay up to 2 billion yuan as it sold more than 3 million units of pure electric cars and plug-in hybrids that year. BYD reported a total of 21 billion yuan in net profit in the first three quarters of 2023 with sales of more than 2 million vehicles and components such as batteries and smartphone electronics.

Gigafactory delivers 947,000 Teslas

Tesla's Shanghai plant, the United States carmaker's first gigafactory outside the US, delivered 947,000 vehicles in 2023, the company said on Wednesday in its production and deliveries report. The company said the figure was a 33 percent increase from 2022. It added that over half of the more than 1.8 million electric vehicles Tesla globally delivered in 2023 came from the Shanghai plant. Capable of producing a car in less than 40 seconds, Tesla's localization rate of car components used in the Shanghai factory has exceeded 95 percent. In 2023, Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai delivered more than 600,000 electric vehicles to the Chinese market.

Li Auto to develop pure electric MPV

China's new energy vehicle startup Li Auto said last week it expects to launch and begin deliveries of its first fully electric car in March. Li Auto has started taking preorders in China for its Mega multipurpose vehicle at an estimated price of under 600,000 yuan ($83,911). The automaker said in November that the Mega would be the first model produced at its Beijing plant, which has a design capacity of 100,000 units a year. Founded in 2015, Li Auto offers four extended range hybrid SUVs priced above 300,000 yuan designed for family users. It ranked seventh by sales volume in the first 10 months of 2023 among Chinese NEV manufacturers and has not unveiled any plans to sell its vehicles overseas.

Ford posts highest figures since 2020

Ford Motor on Thursday posted its best annual auto sales in the United States since 2020, fueled by sustained demand for the automaker's crossover SUVs and pickup trucks, a day after many of its peers reported double-digit gains in new vehicle sales. The Detroit automaker said vehicle sales rose 7.1 percent year-on-year to 1.99 million units in 2023. Sales of Ford's electric vehicle models, such as the F-150 Lightning pickup truck and Mustang Mach-E crossover, also jumped nearly 18 percent to 72,608 units from a year earlier. The company's EV models accounted for 3.6 percent of total sales. Ford's hybrid vehicle sales were up more than 25 percent year-on-year at 133,743 units.

Hyundai and Kia forecast increase

South Korea's Hyundai Motor and affiliate Kia forecast on Wednesday that their combined global sales will rise about 2 percent in 2024, even as 2023's sales fell short. The duo sold 7.3 million vehicles in 2023, about 3 percent less than their combined target of 7.52 million. This was largely due to a difficult economic environment, including rising interest rates and inflation that pushed vehicles out of reach of some buyers. The companies said they would target global sales of 7.44 million vehicles this year. Kia sold 3.09 million vehicles globally in 2023, posting a new annual global sales record, it said in a statement. Kia's previous best annual performance was in 2014, with sales of 3.04 million units.

Agencies - Motoring