BYD’s rapid growth in the UK car market is being supported by dealers with established reputations in their local communities inspiring buyer confidence.
That’s according to Steve Beattie, deputy country manager for BYD UK, who also emphasised the brand’s focus on delivering a strong commercial case for its dealers.
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Having first entered the UK car market in 2023, the Chinese brand sold more than 51,000 cars here last year, and has delivered year-on-year growth at around 130% during the first quarter of 2026.
Speaking to Automotive Management at the UK media launch of the Atto 3 Evo, Beattie said that this growth was down to the manufacturer’s expanding model line-up, and also to growth in its dealer network, which included 132 live sites at the end of March, with further growth to 150 planned by mid-June.
When asked how much further network growth was planned past that point, Beattie – although saying BYD would pay attention to the size of similarly sized manufacturers’ networks, which he suggested were generally at around the 180 mark – said that BYD was not putting a firm number on this.
He added: “There are two things that we have to be really, really conscious of. There is the commercial opportunity for our dealers – we want to make sure that our dealers have a really profitable network. That’s really, really important to BYD.
“But then the second thing is making ourselves really accessible to customers. We find that as soon as we open BYD in a new town, you see a lot of opportunity come to that new town.
“I think being a new brand, customers feel confident when one of their local dealers has moved into BYD, because they trust in the dealer that they’ve bought cars from for a long time. That helps support the growth.”
Sales team reshuffle brings used market focus
At the end of last year BYD made changes to its sales leadership team, including both new hires and promotions. Beattie explained that part of the motivation for this reshuffle was BYD’s focus on used car sales within its dealer network.
He said: “Previously, Malcolm Fryer was head of fleet and residual value management. Malcolm has been in the industry for many, many years, and he did an incredible job at helping kick start BYD. And in fact, one of his first recruits was Claudio De Freitas, who’s now our head of fleet.
“I really wanted to lean into Malcolm’s experience, and actually, Malcolm’s background, because as well as being a fleet expert, he is a used car remarketing expert, and as our portfolio has grown – and used cars are incredibly important to BYD, and understanding residual values – we took the opportunity to really lean into his experience and get Malcolm to set up a new department.
“So, Malcolm is now our head of used car and remarketing, which is really driving our used car sales back into the dealer network.”