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Jan. 15 – According to German automotive newspaper Automobilwoche, BYD cars have opened price cuts in Germany of up to 15 %.
Earlier, the German government announced the early cancellation of electric car subsidies, the original 3,000 euros of subsidies still available in 2024 was cancelled. And Tesla, Volkswagen and other car companies have cut prices to boost sales.
To cope with the fierce competition in the German market, BYD has also cut the price of Atto 3, Dolphin and Seal to further expand its share.
The Atto 3, BYD’s best-selling model overseas, went on pre-sale in Europe in September 2022, when it was priced at a starting price of 38,000 euros. Earlier this year, the model was priced at around €47,000 and after this price cut, its starting price will be below €40,000, which is lower than major competitors such as the Tesla Model Y (around €45,000) as well as the Volkswagen ID.4 (around €43,900), and even lower than the price of the Volkswagen ID.3. But the price cut still makes the BYD Atto 3 much more expensive than the Chinese version.
BYD’s pricing in Europe is expensive for a variety of reasons, such as paying high tariffs, limited capacity in recent years that has caused shipping costs to skyrocket, and the fact that it’s not as inwardly focused in overseas markets and its brand is relatively well positioned.
But if a price war breaks out in Europe, BYD has enough backbone to deal with it. On the one hand, BYD’s first car carrier BYD EXPLORER NO.1 was formally delivered and left the post recently, which can carry 7,000 cars, and the destination is exactly Europe. This means that the freight cost of BYD car export is greatly reduced.
And in terms of the cost of building cars, BYD also has the advantage. Previously, some Japanese media had disassembled the BYD Seal, and concluded that the car has been ahead of the Tesla Model 3 in the technical level, but the cost is 15% lower. If compared to Volkswagen, the cost is even lower by 35%.
Therefore, BYD is not afraid of any of its rivals to launch a price war, the only uncertainty is the policy level, the EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation was launched on the grounds that cheap Chinese electric cars disrupt the European market.
At the end of 2023, BYD announced the construction of a vehicle production base in Hungary. With the completion of the plant in the future, it may help BYD avoid import tariffs due to countervailing investigations.
