Everything you need to know about BYD
BYD is a name that’s been all over automotive industry media for the last four years, but it’s still relatively unknown to many 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 the largest EV producer 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 11 models to choose from with a total of six electric cars and five plug-in hybrids.
So who or what is BYD Auto?
Only now are UK consumers becoming more familiar with BYD as more of its cars arrive on the roads, 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 more than a decade, and is now rapidly expanding throughout Europe. The brand’s European headquarters is nearing completion in Hungary, including a factory which will produce the Dolphin Surf and Atto 2, and a major research and development centre.
In 2025 BYD overtook Tesla to become the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer and while it did not quite hit an ambitious target of 5.5 million global sales in that year, the 4.6 million achieved put it in the top five car brands. For comparison, Volkswagen sold 4.7 million vehicles globally in 2025.
Historically the big difference with BYD (and which also applies to other Chinese car companies) has been that the majority of its sales were still within China, whereas other major global brands have their sales more evenly distributed around the world. However recent pressures in the home market have seen a big change – BYD exported more than a million vehicles in 2025, more than 150% more than in 2024. That’s a huge uplift 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 – more than 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 2026, UK customers have 11 BYD cars to choose from – six all-electric models and five plug-in hybrids – mostly with marine animal-themed names. They all share consistent quality, the entire range earning either A or B-level scores on The Car Expert’s industry-leading Expert Rating index.
The range starts with the Dolphin Surf, an electric city car launched in mid 2025 and BYD’s cheapest model – starting from under £19k it’s also one of the cheapest EVs on sale, only the likes of the Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03 undercutting it.
The BYD Dolphin is a bigger sister to the Dolphin Surf, similar in size to a Vauxhall Corsa, and was the company’s second model to go on UK sale. It earns plaudits for its price, equipment levels and safety rating though less praise for its on-the-road performance.
BYD models in our Expert Rating index
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 car was BYD’s first UK model and was significantly updated in 2026, being renamed the Atto 3 Evo – according to BYD the changes, including more range, better boot space and even a change from front to rear-wheel drive, were a direct response of customer feedback.
The Atto 2 Electric launched in late 2025 as a smaller SUV in the same mould as the Atto 3, and challenging cars like the Skoda Epiq, Renault 4, Vauxhall Frontera and so on. More recently it has been joined by a plug-in hybrid version, BYD calling such models DM-i variants.
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. Recently arrived in showrooms is the Seal 6 DM-i, the plug-in hybrid variant of the saloon, and this car is also being offered in a more practical Touring (estate) form.
There’s also the BYD Seal U DM-i, which (rather confusingly) is a mid-sized SUV and again 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.
Also related to the Seal is the BYD Sealion 7, 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.
In early 2026 a second Sealion model arrived, the Sealion 5. It’s a plug-in hybrid and of similar size to the Seal U, its rivals including the Hyundai Tucson, Volkswagen Tiguan and Volvo XC60.
The pace of new models from BYD seems not to be slowing. First will be the Dolphin G, set to arrive in mid 2026 and effectively a combustion-engined version of the Dolphin Surf – this should also give it the title of the smallest plug-in hybrid car on UK sale.
The Dolphin G is apparently the first BYD model designed specifically for Europe, not being sold in China, and will be followed by several more Euro-specific cars.
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?
The growth of BYD’s UK dealer network has reflected the growth in sales – the company had 52 outlets at the end of 2024 but a year later had more than doubled its network to 125 sites.
Many of these are located within multi-franchise dealerships such as 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. And BYD makes its own batteries – the company is one of the world’s largest producers of batteries, its units powering millions of smartphones and tablets, including iPhones and iPads.
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 than 51,000 cars in the UK in 2025, compared to less than 9,000 in 2024, so its growth curve has been almost vertical. BYD already has a bigger slice of the UK market than such long-established brands as Renault and Volvo, only just behind Nissan and Peugeot.
There have, however, been signs of that pace of growth slowing a little in more recent times, and the company is being outshone by rival Chinese brand Omoda Jaecoo, which now sells more cars in the UK than BYD and had the best-selling car on the market in March 2026 – despite arriving later and having far fewer model lines.
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’:
This feature was first published in March 2023 with the latest update in May 2026.
Additional reporting by Andrew Charman.
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