▲A visitor to the BYD booth looks at an engine at the 20th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition on April 18, 2023. （Photo: VCG）

Chinese new-energy vehicle (NEV) maker BYD celebrated the production of its 5 millionth NEV on Wednesday, making it the first automaker in the world to hit this record.

The brand's success, a paradigm of China's fast-growing NEV market, demonstrates the country's ambition to lead the global new-energy revolution.

BYD is the world's first carmaker to reach this milestone. It took the company 13 years to make its first 1 million NEVs, but only 18 months to hit the record of 3 million. The number then jumped to 5 million in just nine months.

Speaking at BYD's headquarters in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province on Wednesday, CEO Wang Chuanfu said that his company will continue to invest in core technologies.

BYD has 11 research institutes with more than 90,000 R&D personnel, averaging 15 patented authorizations per working day. 

Wang said that NEVs have provided a new driver for the development of Chinese automotive brands. He said that it is projected that by 2025, the penetration rate of NEVs in China could reach 60 percent and the market share of Chinese brand passenger vehicles is expected to rise to 70 percent.

Behind BYD's success is the consistent growth of China's auto market. The annual sales of NEVs in China reached 6.887 million, and the market share increased to 25.6 percent, which was 12.1 percentage points higher year-on-year, and the global sales accounted for more than 60 percent, Xinhua News Agency reported. The momentum is likely to persist and push China to surpass Japan as the world's largest exporter of all types of vehicles by the end of 2023, Wu Shuocheng, a veteran automobile analyst, told the Global Times in an earlier interview.

The rapid growth of China's NEV market is inseparable from the policy support of the Chinese government, which has introduced measures to boost the quality development of this flourishing sector. On June 21, a new round of tax breaks was announced for NEV buyers, with total tax exemptions of about 520 billion yuan ($72.15 billion).

The NEV industry contributes heavily to China's green development plan, and the country is striving to promote the development of NEVs, which have irreplaceable advantages in reducing carbon emissions. 

According to the 2022 China Automotive Low Carbon Action Plan published by the China Automotive Technology & Research Center, compared with internal-combustion vehicles, battery electric models reduce carbon emissions by 43.4 percent. 

China is electrifying its fleet of vehicles for public works and pushing sales of NEVs in key areas to reduce air pollution, according to the guideline for the synergistic effects of reducing pollution and carbon emissions issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2022.

Benefiting from policy support and expanding market demand, BYD is thriving in both the domestic and global markets. The company aims to deliver more than 3 million vehicles in 2023, Li Yunfei, general manager of the brand and public relations department, was quoted as saying by domestic media earlier.