BYD was not influenced by chip shortage. Its new business plan in focusing on electric cars marked its first place in the announcement of the discontinuation of fuel cars.
On June 2, 2022, BYD released its production and sales report for May 2022. The sales volume of new energy vehicles in this reported month was 114,943. Till the end of May 2022, the cumulative sales in this year were 507,314, up 348.11% year over year.
At the beginning of April, 2022, BYD announced its discontinuation of fuel vehicles from March 2022. BYD will focus on pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. This sets BYD’s status of becoming the first car company around the world of announcing the discontinuation of fuel vehicles. Li Qian, secretary of BYD's board of directors, explained the reasons for discontinuation were due to the company’s new business plan and limited production capacity. BYD needed to save more space for electric vehicles. BYD’s new strategic plan is to concentrate on electric vehicles and to lead the field into a new level.
In preparation for the discontinuation of fuel vehicles, BYD has found 6 lithium mines in Africa that fulfilled the acquisition intentions. BYD’s calculation indicated the current ore amount can convert into 1 million tons of lithium carbonate. And if BYD successfully won the ownership of these mines, BYD will has up to 10 year of battery demand.
BYD seems to be the only several companies that are not severely influenced by chip shortage. If we compared BYD’s similar companies, Geely Automobile and Changan Automobile are selected. Both of them and BYD were ranked as TOP 3 Chinese brand car companies in terms of retail sales in Q1 2022. And BYD was the highest sales among automakers in the field of the new energy vehicle market in China.