Chinese car maker BYD saw sales jump at the end of last year, leaving it closer to claiming the title of the world's best-selling electric vehicle (EV) maker of 2024. The company says it sold 207,734 EVs in December, taking its annual total to 1.76 million, as subsidies and discounts helped attract customers.

Increased competition and concern from buyers about the price of electric vehicles means lower-than-average sales for the US company behind the Cybertruck. View on euronews

The EV giant sold 1.76 million electric cars in 2024, per figures released on Wednesday, putting it within touching distance of beating Tesla.

The electric-car company led by Elon Musk no longer has the market to itself. Investors are focusing on autonomous driving and other new technologies.

BYD's sales jumped significantly at the end of 2024, bringing the Chinese EV maker closer to Tesla in the race for global electric vehicle supremacy. With a 41% year-on-year increase, BYD's impressive performance comes amid growing competition,

Thus, to keep its crown as the world's top seller of electric cars, Tesla needs to deliver over 400,000 cars in the final quarter to keep ahead of BYD. The U.S. carmaker sold a record 1.81 million vehicles in 2023, and it is expected to reveal its fourth-quarter deliveries for 2024 later this week.

Tesla Inc.’s annual vehicle sales dropped for the first time in more than a decade despite a year-end push that sent deliveries to a record in the fourth quarter.

Tesla’s production and delivery numbers for 2024 are out, and the numbers are pretty sobering. The premiere EV company in the US produced 1.77 million cars this year, a drop of about 4 percent compared to the previous year,

Chinese electric-vehicle growth continued in December, with BYD set to take the crown of largest seller from Tesla for the second time. Growth alone, however, wasn’t enough to give all the Chinese EV stocks a boost.

China’s BYD Co. enjoyed a year-end surge to push total sales to 4.25 million passenger cars last year, narrowing its gap with Tesla Inc. as the two vie for the crown of top-selling electric-vehicle maker of 2024.