While the development of electric cars is showing signs of slowing down, the sales of plug-in hybrid cars are increasing rapidly due to their affordable prices and significantly lower operating costs compared to traditional petrol cars.
According to Bloomberg, since the Chinese government stopped subsidizing electric cars at the end of 2022, the market share of plug-in hybrid cars in the country has witnessed strong growth. Specifically, in 2023, PHEV sales increased by 83% compared to 2022, while the corresponding figure for pure electric cars was only 21%.
In January of this year – a low point in the demand for car sales in China, pure electric car sales decreased by 39% compared to December 2023, while plug-in hybrid cars only decreased by 16%. According to data from the China Passenger Car Association (PCA), overall car sales declined by 14% in the previous month.
The advantage of affordable prices is attracting Chinese customers to plug-in hybrid cars – a type of car that combines the advantages of both petrol and electric cars. In addition, the ability to only use electric motors for short-distance travel helps these cars have significantly lower operating costs compared to traditional petrol cars.
In this East Asian country, the number of electric cars sold is still twice as high as plug-in hybrid cars. However, the rapid growth of hybrid cars has raised doubts about the future of pure electric cars.
The increasing popularity of plug-in hybrid cars is bad news for car manufacturers like Tesla, Nio, or Xpeng, who only produce fully electric cars. Their customers are mainly concentrated in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. On the other hand, BYD is benefiting from this new trend. The brand founded by Wang Chuanfu sold more than 3 million cars in 2023, with plug-in hybrid cars accounting for nearly half of the sales.
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Unlike most other brands, BYD has its own DM-i platform for plug-in hybrid cars. The diverse product development has helped BYD surpass Tesla to become the world’s largest electric car manufacturer in the fourth quarter of last year.
“BYD is the leading competitor – they have a weapon that Tesla doesn’t have, which is plug-in hybrid cars,” said Bill Russo, former director of Chrysler and current CEO of Automobileity, a Shanghai-based consulting company.
Thai Son (Tuoitrethudo)
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