BYD to Launch High-end EV Brand with Starting Price at 1M Yuan

According to people familiar with the matter, BYD will release a new high-end brand in Q4 of this year targeting the market priced above 1 million yuan ($145,936), Yicai reported on August 25. A few days ago, the D9 founding limited edition model launched by BYD’s 90%-owned Denza was priced as high as 660,000 yuan ($96,318), but it will no longer be the most expensive electric car in the company’s product matrix.

Li Yunfei, general manager of BYD’s brand and public relations division, previously posted about BYD’s high-end brands on his social platform. He described BYD’s passenger car business as consisting of the Dynasty, Ocean, Denza and the new high-end brand. Besides Denza, which is a joint venture between BYD and Mercedes-Benz, all other sub-brands are wholly owned and operated by BYD.

According to the previous plan, the price range of BYD’s high-end brand will be between 800,000 and 1.5 million yuan ($116,749-218,905). The latest information learned by Yicai is that BYD has raised the starting price of its high-end brands to over 1 million yuan and is tentatively scheduled to be released at the end of this year. While targeting the million yuan and above market, the new high-end brand will have a dedicated team for branding, products, sales and services in addition to operations.

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At present, Chinese new energy vehicles (NEVs) are growing substantially. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, from January to July, the sales volumes of NEVs in China topped 3.194 million units, a year-on-year increase of 1.2 times, with a market share of 22.1%.

BYD, which has stopped production and sales of fuel vehicles since March of this year, is speeding up to seize the NEV market. In July, its sales volume reached 162,500 units, an increase of 183.1% year-on-year. From January to July, the cumulative sales volume of new vehicles reached 803,800 units, beating Tesla to win out the global NEV sales champion. Thanks to the rapid growth of sales of NEVs, BYD’s net profit in the first half is expected to be 2.8 billion- 3.6 billion yuan ($408.6 million-525.4 million), a year-on-year increase of 138.59% to 206.76%.