BYD generated more revenue outside China than in its home market in the first half of 2026, according to company filings. 53% of the company’s revenue came from sales overseas. Domestic vehicle registrations of the BYD brand were down nearly 46% YoY.

The Shenzhen-based automaker generated 181.3 billion yuan (27 billion USD) in overseas revenue during the first six months of the year, up 34% year-on-year and accounting for 53% of its total revenue. Revenue from China fell 31% year-on-year, according to BYD’s interim results released on August 28.

BYD brand registered 795,169 vehicles in China in the first half of 2026, down 45.9% YoY, according to insurance registrations monitored by China EV DataTracker. Other brands from the BYD Group are performing better: for example, Fang Cheng Bao registered 131,000 cars in China in H1 2026, up 115% YoY; however, those sales are far from enough to offset the loss of BYD’s main brand.

According to company filings, BYD sold 792,256 cars outside China in the first half of the year, up 70.6% from the same period last year. This trend further accelerates, as in August BYD sold a record 190,000 cars overseas, up 134% from last year.

Those figures represent the whole BYD group, including all its series and brands such as Denza, Fang Cheng Bao, and Yangwang.

As the domestic market is still under pressure from the price war, overseas business has played an important role in terms of margins. BYD said its first-half gross margin increased from 18.01% a year earlier to 18.85%, mainly due to growth in its overseas vehicle business. The gross margin of its overseas operations reached 22%, up 1.9 percentage points year-on-year.

BYD’s overall revenue fell 7.1% year-on-year to 344.8 billion yuan (50.9 billion USD) in the first half of 2026. Net profit attributable to shareholders dropped 20.5% to 12.3 billion yuan (1.8 billion USD).

Where is the domestic weakness coming from? Zooming out and looking at the data, BYD is struggling in the PHEV market, and this trend is not new – it started in 2025: BYD Group sold 2,288,709 PHEVs in 2025, down 7.9% from 2024. In 2026, this trend continued: between January and August, the company sold 1,265,017 PHEVs, down 11.2% from the same period last year.

However, looking at the first two months of H2 (July and August), we can see that BYD broke the disastrous trend from the first half. In total, they sold 844,456 cars globally, up 18.5% YoY. And that trend is driven by a rise in BEV sales – which were up 29.6% YoY, while PHEVs were up 6% YoY. It seems BYD got some new steam for H2, and we will keep an eye on it.

Also, it is important to note that the pressure is not limited to BYD. China’s passenger vehicle retail sales fell 21.1% year-on-year in July, marking the tenth consecutive monthly decline, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). Passenger vehicle exports from China, meanwhile, increased by 88.2%.

BYD is expanding sales and production in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Brazil has become BYD’s largest market outside China, while the automaker is also building local manufacturing capacity in markets including Brazil, Hungary and Turkey.

BYD now generates the majority of its revenue outside its home market, while in China it has become a game of survival, desperately waiting for competitors to start losing wheels: Yes, as of today, there are still over 100 auto brands in China.

Year/BYD sales	Total sales	Overseas sales
2022	1,857,379	50,021
2023	3,012,906	242,765
2024	4,250,370	417,204
2025	4,550,036	1,046,083
2026*	2,621,777*	1,161,563*

Source: CarNewsChina (View original)