BYD Exported More Vehicles In April Than Tesla Sold Worldwide*

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

One of our readers, “trackdaze,” dropped some pretty crazy stats on our lap last week in response to my article about BYD’s April sales totals and trends.

In addition to its sales in China, BYD exported 135,098 vehicles in April — all fully battery electric or plugin hybrid vehicles, of course. As noted in the headline, and as trackdaze informed us, that’s more vehicles than Tesla sold worldwide in April 2026 — at home and abroad!

Now, the truth is, we don’t actually know Tesla’s exact sales number, since Tesla doesn’t publish sales numbers monthly, only quarterly. (Hence the asterisk in the headline.) However, Tesla’s global sales in the first quarter of 2026 totaled 358,023, and one third of that is 119,341 — considerably fewer than BYD’s 135,098 exports. Of course, Tesla could have more sales in the second quarter of this year, but even so, Tesla’s delivery schedule is such that it always delivers a lot fewer vehicles in the first month of the quarter than the last — so it’s really highly unlikely Tesla’s April deliveries came close to BYD’s 135,098 exports. (Note that BYD also tends to deliver more vehicles later in the quarter than earlier in the quarter.)

As trackdaze noted, BYD’s export total is also about double the worldwide sales of Lexus. I’m not finding Lexus’ total global sales for April anywhere, but I’m sure trackdaze is right.

BYD’s total passenger vehicle sales in April came to 314,100 units, so in addition to BYD’s 135,098 exports, the company sold 179,002 vehicles at home. Not bad. Well, technically, #1 globally for plugin vehicles — by far.