BYD is a name that’s been all over automotive industry media for the last couple of years, but it’s still relatively unknown to consumers. If you’ve never heard of BYD, that’s perfectly normal. It’s one of several new car brands that have arrived in the UK over the last few years.
BYD stands for Build Your Dreams, which is a rather cringey name for a car company but presumably sounded good at a marketing meeting in China when the company was being founded. Its cars originally had ‘BUILD YOUR DREAMS’ emblazoned across their bootlids, but thankfully this has now been swapped for a far more discreet BYD badging on all export models.
Regardless of what you think of the name, you can’t really deny the company’s success. BYD is one of the largest and most successful new automotive brands from China, and is now one of the largest EV producers in the world. It’s privately owned and is now China’s largest private-sector employer, although it is believed to receive substantial financial support from the Chinese government to help it achieve its expansion goals.
BYD Auto launched in the UK in 2023, and already has five models to choose from – four electric cars and a plug-in hybrid.
So who or what is BYD Auto?
Relatively few UK consumers will have heard of BYD, but it’s a very different story in its home nation of China. The car company is merely one division of this corporate behemoth.
BYD Company is a conglomerate founded in 1995 to make batteries for various applications. It has since started building its own electric cars through its subsidiary BYD Auto, and is also growing into the van, truck, bus and even rail sectors.
BYD Auto has been China’s biggest-selling EV manufacturer for a decade, and is now rapidly expanding throughout Europe. It has recently announced plans to build a new European headquarters in Hungary, including a major research and development centre.
The company has an ambitious target of 5.5 million global sales in 2025. That’s more than most brands you’ve definitely heard of, and not far off some of the biggest names in the world (for comparison, Volkswagen sold 4.8 million cars around the world last year).
The big difference with BYD (and also applies to other Chinese car companies) is that the majority of its sales are still within China, whereas other major global brands have their sales more evenly distributed around the world. BYD expects to export around 15% of its total production this year – about 800,000 cars – but plans to increase this to 50% by 2030. That’s a huge uplift of millions of cars around the world, which will have significant impacts on other car manufacturers if it succeeds.
When did BYD launch in the UK?
BYD Auto launched in the UK in early 2023 with its first car, the BYD Atto 3, although that was not BYD’s first presence in the UK. London commuters have ridden on BYD buses for several years, with 500 buses operating in the nation’s capital. The company even has its own assembly plant in Scotland where it installs electric batteries in buses made by UK manufacturer ADL (Alexander Dennis Ltd).
The Atto 3 was not the first BYD car on our shores either – a decade ago, the company dipped its toe in UK waters with a few examples of an early electric vehicle called the e6, which was placed with private-hire fleets. This time, the manufacturer is rather more serious about cracking Europe and the UK with far grander plans.
What models does BYD have and what else is coming?
As of May 2025, UK customers have five BYD models to choose from – four all-electric models and a plug-in hybrid – mostly with marine animal-themed names.
The range starts with the BYD Dolphin, a small electric hatchback similar in size to a Vauxhall Corsa. When it launched, the Dolphin was the UK’s cheapest EV, but a few smaller and cheaper models have since arrived from China (the Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03).
The BYD Atto 3 is a small electric SUV/crossover that competes in one of the most heavily fought sectors of the new car market. It lines up against rivals like the MG S5 EV, Kia EV3, Smart #1, Hyundai Kona Electric, Omoda E5, Skoda Elroq, Vauxhall Mokka Electric and plenty of others.
The BYD Seal is a larger electric saloon that is very much a competitor to the Tesla Model 3, BMW i4, Hyundai Ioniq 6 and others. There’s also the BYD Seal U, which (rather confusingly) is a mid-sized SUV that’s a plug-in hybrid model rather than being fully electric. This is in the same market territory as cars like the Volkswagen Tiguan, Vauxhall Grandland, Peugeot 5008, Jaecoo 7 and so on.
Finally, the BYD Sealion is another mid-sized SUV. It’s slightly larger than the Seal U, but is fully electric, so it competes against the likes of the Tesla Model Y, Skoda Enyaq, Volkswagen ID.4, Vauxhall Grandland Electric, Peugeot e-5008 and others.
On the way is the Atto 2, which is unsurprisingly a smaller SUV in the same mould as the Atto 3. It’s due to reach the UK in the second half of 2025. It will go up against cars like the Skoda Epiq, Renault 4, Vauxhall Frontera and so on.
In its home market, the BYD model range numbers almost 20 vehicles from small cars to trucks, and any of them could conceivably be sold in the UK if the company feels that there’s enough of a market opportunity.
Where can I try a BYD car?
By the end of last year, BYD had more than 60 dealers in the UK, and the plan is for this to expand to baby 120 by the end of 2025. Many of these are located within multi-franchise dealerships like Arnold Clark, Lookers, LSH and Pendragon, who are all major dealer groups and regarded as top names in the automotive retail industry.
Many of these groups have seen European brands closing showrooms in recent years, so they have been quite enthusiastic about welcoming BYD to fill empty sites around the country.
What’s particularly significant about this company?
As well as now being the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, BYD is also a completely self-contained manufacturer. It makes almost every component of its vehicles in-house, reducing reliance on external suppliers. The level of investment required to do this is enormous, and is something that the Western car industry hasn’t seen for many decades.
This includes its own chips and semiconductors, global shortages of which caused massive problems for the car industry a couple of years ago.
What makes BYD different to the rest?
Its batteries – BYD cars use a battery pack called a Blade which employs lithium-iron phosphate rather than lithium-ion and a different kind of construction that doesn’t require the battery cells to be placed into modules, saving weight.
In the BYD Seal, the battery is built into the shell of the car rather than being a separate pack, allowing much more freedom in designing the car’s interior. The downside to this, however, is that it makes battery repairs or replacement very difficult.
Battery safety attracts far more attention in China than elsewhere around the globe, thanks to some incidents where faulty batteries have set cars alight while being charged. BYD promotes its battery as much safer than a typical pack, claiming that a pack can have nails fired into it or be heated to 300 degrees C without catching fire.
The Blade also makes no use of cobalt – of all the rare-earth minerals used in EV batteries, cobalt is the least environmentally-friendly, as the mining of it is highly polluting.
Summary
If you haven’t already heard of BYD or seen its cars in your local streets, you’ll certainly start to see them soon. The company sold more cars in the first three months of 2025 than it sold in all of 2024, so its growth curve is almost vertical.
Reviews of BYD’s cars have been fairly mixed, but there’s no doubt that the company has the resources to continue its growth and overall development for years to come.
More in our series ‘Spotlight on China’:
Originally published in March 2023. Last updated in May 2025 to reflect the rapid growth.