On May 28, 2025, BYD’s world’s largest car carrier “Shenzhen” arrived at the Port of Itajai, Brazil, carrying more than 7,000 new energy vehicles, setting a new record for the single batch reception of Brazilian ports. This not only broke the global record for single-time automobile transportation, but also aroused the outside world’s renewed attention to the phenomenon of “port backlog”. The author will analyze the real situation based on data.
Looking back on BYD’s overseas history, commercial vehicles were the main focus in the early days. Passenger car exports began to emerge in 2022, ranking among the top ten, and doubling year by year, and the ranking has risen rapidly. From January to April 2025, 273,000 vehicles were exported, a year-on-year increase of 96.6%, ranking second only to Chery.
BYD’s passenger car exports have entered the fast lane since 2023, led by Yuan PLUS and Song PLUS. In the early days, BEV was the main focus. Starting from December 2024, PHEV products have risen strongly and become a new engine for its export growth.
From the perspective of exports by country, Brazil ranked first with 29,300 vehicles, becoming the country with the largest export volume of BYD in April (and will continue in May); Mexico followed closely with 14,900 vehicles. Latin American countries will become BYD’s core export market in 2025.
From 2015 to 2023, Brazil granted BEV and PHEV import tariff exemption to encourage the development of new energy vehicles. Import tariffs will be gradually restored from January 2024 and will be raised once every July until 35%. This has led to a surge in BYD’s exports to Brazil before each tariff adjustment node, accumulating a large amount of inventory. In May last year, BYD set a record of exporting 39,000 electric vehicles to Brazil in a single month, while its monthly sales at that time were only more than 5,000 units. A similar scene is already happening this year.
Whether this batch of inventory can be digested healthily in the future depends on whether its main models Seagull, Dolphin, Song PLUS, and Song PRO meet the needs of Brazilian consumers.
In terms of models, BYD’s exports to Brazil in 2024 will focus on pure electric small cars Seagull/Dolphin. In 2025, as Seagull will be put into production at BYD’s Brazilian factory first, plug-in hybrid SUVs that take into account both power and economy, represented by Song PLUS DM/Song Pro DM, will become the core export products.
This wave of opening up the situation in developing countries with underdeveloped charging infrastructure with the help of PHEV, competing with Japanese brands with fuel economy and power advantages, is BYD’s overseas strategy to change its thinking after trying pure electric.
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