8:55 am, May 12, 2025
BYD wants to become the biggest car brand in the world and has its eyes set on becoming the UK’s number one within just three years.
That is according to one of the firm’s most senior British executives, who has pledged to put ‘profitable dealers’ at the heart of the brand’s plans.
Steve Beattie, sales and marketing director of BYD UK, says that the market in this country represents a major ‘opportunity’ for the Chinese brand, which currently has around 60 dealerships.
Last year, Volkswagen was the UK’s best-selling car brand with 166,000 units. By contrast BYD sold just 8,700 vehicles.
Despite this, the brand has a swathe of new models in the pipeline and with a dealer network growing at a rapid rate, Beattie believes conditions are perfect for BYD to make a charge up the sales charts.
Appearing on the most recent episode of the Car Dealer Podcast, he told hosts James Baggott and Jon Reay: ‘BYD’s ambition was to be number one in China, going back a few years and they are now number one in China.
‘The ambition they’re constantly looking at is to be number one in the world. If you’re going to be number one car manufacturer in the world, you’re going to have to be number one in the big markets like the UK to be able to do that.
‘The UK is a really interesting market because actually, us as Brits, receive new brands very well.
‘We’ve only got to look back to when the Japanese bought over brands. Then more recently, when I was an area manager in 2008, I remember Kia and Hyundai launching in the scrappage scheme, I remember those cars and where those brands are now.
‘I think firstly, history dictates that as a market, the UK is really open to new brands and I think that’s one thing that is going in our favour.’
‘I think the second thing is the assertiveness of BYD in terms of their models. We’re on our fifth model, we’ve got our sixth model, which is about to launch in June, which is our Dolphin Surf, which actually only launched two years ago in China.
‘We have make sure that we’ve got the right models and then the third thing is to have a really engaged dealer network.
‘If we’ve got a really engaged dealer network, we’re supporting profitable dealers moving forward, then ultimately we put all those three things together, then absolutely we’ve got the opportunity to become number one.’
Dealers see ‘good horse to back’
Beattie also explained how BYD’s retail network has evolved since arriving in the UK, with the firm now aiming for around 35 dealer partners.
The network is currently made up of a mix of larger dealers – like Arnold Clark – as well as a selection of handpicked local family groups.
The brand recently took a number of its partners out to China to see the firm’s facilities for themselves and Beattie says the trip certainly had the desired impact.
Speaking about the network, he said: ‘We’ve got some really established players.
‘We’ve got some big groups and we’ve got some local family groups. It’s really good to have that balance between a network of PLCs and smaller groups and we’ve got one or two that are single sites as well.’
He added: ‘We’ve sort of left it open to who we can bring on. We want scale with everybody.
‘I think originally when BYD came in, they thought they only wanted a very small amount of partners, but quickly that developed.
‘Really, we only really want maybe 35ish retailer partners because we want everyone to have, not necessarily skin in the game, but actually the opportunity to really drive the brand forward and have enough sites to make it work.
‘What I love is when we took them over to China in January, there were some big, strong – I won’t say grumpy – players.
‘When they came back after seeing the factory, after seeing the new product, after seeing BYD in Shenzhen, they wanted to open lots more sites.
‘It’s quite lucky in terms of the power of BYD, which helps convince retailers that we’re a good horse to back.’
The Car Dealer Podcast, sponsored by Carwow, sees an industry guest join our hosts to discuss the motor trade’s biggest headlines of every week.
A full list of the stories discussed on this week’s episode can be found here.
You can listen to all episodes of the Car Dealer Podcast on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, or play the video above.
