New BYD boss promises sharper focus on Aussie buyers

The new Australian boss of BYD – the fast-rising Chinese electric brand – has promised its local expansion will be carefully managed. He insists BYD won’t fall into the same traps that have derailed other challenger brands, pledging smarter growth, stronger customer support and a steadier supply chain to keep pace with surging demand.

Stephen Collins, the newly-appointed Chief Operating Officer of BYD Australia has outlined the benefits he believes the swap from independent distribution for the brand in Australia to factory-backed will have for car buyers.

The former Nissan and Honda Australia executive was explicit in his guarantee the brand’s expansion would be carefully managed to avoid customer dissatisfaction.

“There's no doubt that with fast expansion of sales it puts pressure on the back-end,” he said. “It puts pressure on delivery of cars, it puts pressure on servicing and all of the components that ultimately lead to a good customer experience and people coming back.

“So we are equally focused on not just opening up new dealerships to sell cars and sell new cars, but making sure that we're investing locally in parts warehousing and logistics and all of the components that have to work together to be a strong, long-term, sustainable, successful brand.

“This is not a flash in the pan,” he stated.

In Australia, US 4x4 brand Jeep is the poster-child for an expansion that ultimately tripped it up. Rapid sales growth led to an over-stressed dealer network that couldn’t cope with an exponential rise in customers. This was exacerbated by reliability issues with the Grand Cherokee.

“In five or less years, we want to be an established leader in every respect,” Collins said.

“We've got to be good at everything. It's not good enough to say good product and good value and some other stuff that's good,” said Collins.

“For us it's making sure that we're good front-end, back-end, retention, brand values, brand reputation, trust, all the key things that make good brands great.”

The cornerstone of Collins’ brief is undoubtedly to continue to grow sales that are already up 146.7 per cent year-on-year. BYD sits eighth in the sales charts to the end of July 2025 and expects to finish the year seventh.

“I think by the end of this year, we'll be well and truly in the top 10,” said Collins. “We want to continue on a similar trajectory.”

Collins insists the factory take-over of the BYD business in Australia will help that growth.

“It enables us to streamline stuff,” he said. “So, for example, product, I think we can go straight through channels into the global organisation, and the speed with which product decisions and development happens here is pretty unique.

“The other reason is around supply, stock, and BYD is very vertically integrated in terms of supply chain and very flexible in terms of supply chain.

“That's been one of the things I think that's been a challenge. There's been some long wait times on particular vehicles.

“We're aiming to reduce the wait times on certain really popular models. That's probably the primary one that people hopefully will see that flows through the system in the short term.”

The product expansion will continue, Collins confirmed, with four new models due for launch by early 2026. Two of them – the BYD Atto 2 compact electric SUV and BYD Sealion 8 three-row PHEV SUV – have already been named.

Collins also revealed the BYD Australian dealer network would grow from the current mainly metropolitan network into regional centres, expanding to at least 120 outlets.

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