4 Chinese EV Producers with Soaring Overseas EV Sales — CHART

I wrote yesterday about XPENG’s rapid sales growth in 14 overseas markets. Let’s add a few more Chinese EV companies to this analysis. Adding in BYD, Leapmotor, and Zeekr, we can see all of these companies growing rapidly in these overseas markets. For now, we’re looking at sales in the first half of the year. We aim to start examining these trends on a monthly basis, though.

Naturally, in pure volume terms, BYD stands out. It has reached nearly 100,000 sales per half year in these 14 markets, but I think it’s safe to say the company will go well beyond that in the second half of the year (typically the much stronger half of the year in most markets). Already, though, 1st half of 2025 sales were more than 60,000 units higher than 1st half of 2024 sales. In terms of percentage growth, BYD’s sales rose 155.5% year over year.

If you thought that was impressive, just wait a moment. That said, clearly, in volume terms, BYD grew the most from this bunch.

Looking at XPENG again, its sales grew by almost 7,600 units year over year in these 14 markets in the first half of the year, which was a 338.6% rise.

Leapmotor is not far behind XPENG in terms of H1 2025 sales in these 14 markets, but it’s coming from almost nothing in H1 2024. Unsurprisingly, then, its percentage growth is insane: +5227%.

Then we’ve got Zeekr, which rose from 800 to 3,287 sales year over year, or 310.9%.

Naturally, if you look at the numbers market by market, you see different brands doing better in different markets. In some markets, BYD’s growth stands out; in others, XPENG’s rise is the highlight; and in others, it’s Leapmotor or Zeekr. Looking at their growth across a large spread of overseas markets is especially interesting and fun, though. Let’s see how these young Chinese EV companies do over time.