BYD is now a top 10 brand in Australia, and to crack the top five, it’s not only expanding its model lineup and its dealer network but also looking to fleet sales.
“For us, one of the key markets of opportunity is fleet. It’s pretty simple: 35 per cent of all new vehicle sales are fleet. This is not demos and all that stuff – this is genuine corporate fleets, governments, et cetera,” BYD Australia chief operating officer Stephen Collins told Australian media, including CarExpert.
“It’s stable. These customers want fit-for-purpose vehicles, whole-of-cost life ownership is really important to them… Where the opportunity lies is… corporate sales and fleet business.
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“The strong, established OEMs, around 35 per cent of their volume is this type of business. For us to date, it’s been 10 per cent.”
“So we’ve built a fleet department, we’ve built processes, pricing, we’ve got evaluation cards. We’re really working hard to improve our performance in that fleet space.
“We’re not ignoring the retail opportunity, but we’re going to grow our fleet opportunity.”
Last year, 82.8 per cent of BYD’s 52,415 sales in Australia went to private buyers, with 15.9 per cent delivered to businesses and what little was left going to government and rental fleet buyers.
That private buyer percentage was by far the highest among the top 10 best-selling brands in Australia, with the next highest being GWM (62.5 per cent) and Mazda (59.7 per cent).
Excluding the Atto 1 and Atto 2, launched at the very end of 2025, the BYD vehicle with the lowest percentage of private sales was the Atto 3 at a still-high 75.7 per cent, leaving roughly a quarter of its sales for fleet buyers.
While utes typically have a high percentage of fleet sales, the Shark 6 – which last year was Australia’s fifth best-selling ute overall – saw a whopping 86.1 per cent of its sales go to private buyers.
In contrast, just 24.4 per cent of Toyota HiLux sales were to private buyers, along with 20.4 per cent of Ford Ranger sales.
That was enough to make the Shark 6 Australia’s fourth best-selling vehicle among private buyers, despite finishing 18th overall when fleet sales were taken into account. Only the Toyota RAV4, Tesla Model Y and Mazda CX-5 finished higher among private buyers.
The launch of a cab/chassis version could help give the Shark 6 greater cut-through among fleet buyers.
Likewise, BYD has just launched the Sealion 5 as its cheapest plug-in hybrid (PHEV) yet – as well as one of the cheapest on the Australian market.
The Atto 1 and Atto 2, as more affordable EV options, could also help prove tempting for fleet purchasers given their low list prices.
Fleet buyers are after more than just a low purchase price however, with other concerns being parts availability, repair costs and residual values.
“We’re really working hard to reduce wait times for service. We’re really working hard on parts, so we have a 95 per cent fill rate on our parts,” said Mr Collins.
“What that means is that 95 per cent of the time when a dealer needs a part, it’s sitting in our shed in Melbourne or Brisbane, which is pretty much industry standard. We’ve just invested in a Melbourne warehouse, 20,000 square meters, and we’ll be investing in warehouses in other states over the coming months.”
Mr Collins told CarExpert last October that a slew of new product launches across key vehicle segments into 2026 should see the brand on the annual sales podium within 12-18 months, which would put it ahead of household names like Mazda, Kia and Hyundai.
“We’re not really pitching a [volume] number,” Mr Collins said. “[But] I think if you took our position [in 2024] we were number 16… if you look at today, I think we’re number eight.”
BYD did end up finishing in eighth position in 2025.
“For [2026], the volume is quite fluid, but I think our aspiration would definitely be close to the top three,” Mr Collins added.
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