BYD gross sales hit report in August regardless of general slowdown in electrical automobiles in China

BYD unveiled the BYD Seal at the IAA in Munich in Europe. The electric sedan has a starting price of 44,900 euros (48,479 US dollars).

Arjun Kharpal CNBC

BEIJING – Chinese electric car giant BYD sold a record number of passenger vehicles in August, with sales of hybrid vehicles growing faster than those of pure battery vehicles.

The company said sales in August rose 30% to 370,854 passenger vehicles compared to the same period last year.

Sales of pure battery cars rose nearly 12%, while sales of hybrid vehicles rose 48%, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all BYD cars sold last month.

In contrast, several start-ups in the alternative fuel vehicle sector reported a decline in deliveries last month.

Li Carknown primarily for its range-extender vehicles, reported 48,122 deliveries in August, down from a record 51,000 in July.

Aito, which uses Huawei technology, said it delivered 31,216 cars last month, more than 10,000 fewer vehicles than the previous month. Huawei is selling Aito's brand and patents to the automaker Being for 2.5 billion yuan (352.5 million dollars).

Cheaper cars come onto the market

Nio According to the company, 20,176 cars were delivered in August, which is a slight decrease from July but is above 20,000 for the fourth month in a row.

The company's lower-cost Onvo brand opened 105 stores on Sunday and is preparing to deliver its first car, the L60 SUV, this month. Nio is expected to report its results on Friday.

Xpeng reported 14,036 car deliveries in August, its best month of the year so far.

The company said on Friday that it had started deliveries of its newly launched Mona M03 electric car, which sells for the equivalent of less than $20,000 in China. It was not clear whether those M03 deliveries were included in the total number reported by Xpeng.

Geely-supports Zeekr reported a month-on-month increase to 18,015 deliveries in August, but a decrease from 20,206 deliveries in June.

Undercut Tesla and expand globally

On Friday, Zeekr announced that it will launch its first SUV later this month, priced more than $1,400 lower than TeslaThe US-listed Chinese company said it plans to deliver the SUV worldwide by the end of this year, but did not specify countries or regions.

BYD said it sold 31,451 cars overseas last month, bringing the year-to-date total to 264,869, higher than the 242,765 cars sold overseas all of last year.

If BYD maintains its average monthly overseas sales pace through the end of December, the company will sell nearly 400,000 cars outside China this year, according to CNBC calculations.

Xiaomi only that it delivered more than 10,000 cars in August for the third month in a row. In mid-July, CEO Lei Jun said the company aims to deliver 100,000 units of its SU7 electric sedan by the end of November.

This means that Xiaomi will have to deliver at least 16,000 cars per month on average from August to November, according to CNBC's calculations based on published data.

The smartphone company began mass shipping the SU7 in April at a price about $4,000 less than Tesla's Model 3.

— CNBC's Sonia Heng contributed to this report.