BYD has declared its intention to topple Toyota as the world’s largest automaker, despite being locked out of the lucrative US market.

A focus on sales outside of the domestic Chinese market has seen BYD arrest an eight-month sales slide, despite lower sales in China. BYD’s executive vice president and head of overseas operations, Stella Li, told Britain’s Financial Times that BYD was aiming to overtake Toyota’s number one spot within five years.

BYD’s trajectory still sits some way off the pace, with WhichCar by Wheels previously reporting that BYD needs to more than double the 4.6 million cars it sold in 2025 to compete with Toyota’s 11.32 million sales. The brand first declared its intention to take the top spot earlier this year. 

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Li’s latest comments reveal that BYD will not attempt to find a workaround for legislative roadblocks that prevent Chinese-owned brands and Chinese-built vehicles from being sold in the United States.

When asked about becoming the world’s top-selling automaker, Li told the Financial Times: “We don’t need the US market to achieve that.”

Toyota reported 2.5 million vehicles as sold in the USA in 2025, including Lexus-badged models. Last year, the National Automobile Dealers Association reported 16.2 million new cars as sold in the US – a massive potential market for BYD to sit out of.

Li highlighted progress in key markets such as Europe, Latin America, South-east Asia, and Australia as the brand adapted to slowing domestic sales, helping it build overall volumes.

She also declared that BYD did not need to acquire an international brand to grow volumes, putting to rest speculation that the Volkswagen Group could be looking to offload part of its portfolio to BYD.

Li said that BYD remained “open-minded” to acquiring a premium European brand if the timing and opportunity were right, but with its own upscale Denza brand growing its product lines, and investing heavily in the European market, it appears BYD is prepared to challenge European brands with its own resources.

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In Australia, BYD demonstrated its potential in June’s sales charts, selling 18,881 cars for the month, just 243 units shy of first-placed Toyota.

While the brand admitted it was unlikely to match that monthly volume again, it has moved into second-place year-to date. With 52,335 sales to the end of June, BYD sits a long way off the pace of Toyota (95,141) but overtook Ford (42,296) and Kia (41,846).

In the first six months of 2026 BYD has almost matched the 52,415 unit full-year tally posted in 2025, and has moved from the number eight brand in Australia to the number two position.