BYD trumps rivals for unprompted brand awareness

BYD is the fastest-growing brand right now in Australia, where it plans to eventually outsell Toyota, and it seems a major part of its popularity explosion is public awareness of the brand.

The Chinese EV specialist enjoyed a 488 per cent upswing in sales last year compared to 2022 (its debut model, the BYD Atto 3 small electric SUV, arrived in August that year) and continued that growth last month with a 390 per cent sales increase over January 2023.

New data from carsales’ own research has shown BYD to have the second-best unprompted brand awareness among Australian consumers when it comes to electric vehicles, with Tesla predictably having the strongest.

The research involved more than 1600 participants who were asked to name as many EV manufacturers as they could off the top of their heads (unprompted), before then being asked to pick out EV producers from a set list of brands.

A huge 83 per cent of participants named Tesla, while 33 per cent named BYD, edging out Hyundai in third (30%), MG in fourth (27%) and Kia in fifth (26%).

Of the 12 most commonly-listed brands, three of them were dedicated EV brands or specialists; the third being Polestar, which was only named by 15 per cent of participants – two per cent less than when a similar study was carried out in November 2022.

Meantime, BYD’s brand awareness has skyrocketed up from seven per cent in November 2022 to the 33 per cent most recently (January 2024), while Tesla largely remained steady (84% versus 83%).

MG was the only other brand to record an awareness increase, climbing by nine per cent between the two surveys, whereas brands like Hyundai, Toyota and Nissan actually saw a decline.

BYD’s rapid increase in unprompted awareness has been attributed to its aggressive vehicle pricing and marketing strategy, however, it’s the former that’s proven to be the driving factor according to carsales senior research and insights specialist Gage Milecki.

“In the past year, BYD has experienced substantial growth in visibility, evolving from a relatively obscure player in the electric vehicle sector to a potential major contender for Tesla’s market dominance,” he said.

“This surge in recognition can be attributed to BYD’s successful introduction of more economical EV choices compared to its counterparts.

“The affordability factor has proven to be particularly compelling, aligning with consumer sentiment research that underscores the financial considerations and emphasis on pricing in today’s market landscape.”

Tesla has been the biggest player in the EV scene for well over a decade now and so it makes sense for its brand awareness to be sky-high, in the same way Toyota’s is in the context of hybrids and 4x4 off-roaders.

But Polestar and BYD are two newcomers operating at two different ends of the market, with the former circulating in similar segments to Tesla, which in turn puts it in the shadows alongside its still-fresh brand name.

BYD, meantime, has rapidly carved out a niche for itself at the budget end of the EV market – well below the reaches of Tesla (for now) – and has been going gangbusters on making EVs look as attractive as possible.

Looking back to the prompted awareness data, however, and Polestar is tied with BYD for third place with 53 per cent of respondents naming them as EV manufacturers when presented with a list of brand names, but Tesla was still the most-listed name with 87 per cent of participants singling it out.

Hyundai came in second, being listed by 56 per cent of people.

But that’s not the end of BYD’s brand awareness growth; between November 2022 and January 2024, an extra 30 per cent of the population were able to name it as an EV producer – easily the biggest increase of any brand included in the study.

Every one of the top 12 most-listed brands in the prompted survey recorded awareness growth or remained consistent across the 14-month period.

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