China’s BYD has overtaken Tesla as the world’s top-selling maker of fully electric vehicles for a quarter for the first time. BYD reported 526,409 passenger battery-electric vehicle (BEV) sales in the fourth quarter of 2023, while Tesla delivered 484,507 vehicles in the same quarter, according to figures compiled by CnEVPost.
Updated October 2026. We corrected the fourth-quarter 2023 figures, removed numbers we could not verify and added what happened next: BYD outsold Tesla in BEVs for the full year of 2025.
By the end of the third quarter of 2023, Tesla and BYD each held 17 percent of the global market for fully electric cars, according to Counterpoint Research data cited by CnEVPost. It was a milestone in the EV market and a further sign that Chinese carmakers are making their way across the global automotive market. Established brands like Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen, and General Motors Co. still dominate the overall industry, but Chinese companies like BYD have been catching up quickly.
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Tesla still sold more fully electric cars than BYD over 2023 as a whole: 1,808,581 deliveries against BYD’s 1,574,822 BEVs. BYD’s overall volume is higher because it also sells plug-in hybrids, which China counts as new energy vehicles along with BEVs.
What happened next
The quarterly lead turned into an annual one in 2025. According to Electrek, BYD sold 2,254,714 all-electric vehicles in 2025, up 27.9% from the year before, while Tesla delivered 1,636,129 vehicles, about 9% fewer than in 2024. That made 2025 the first full year in which BYD outsold Tesla in BEVs.
BYD was founded in 1995 as a battery manufacturer. Its founder, Wang Chuanfu, set up BYD Auto in January 2003 by buying and renaming a struggling carmaker, Xi’an Qinchuan Automobile, which took the company from rechargeable batteries into car manufacturing.
