BYD sold 1,084 vehicles in Japan in the first half of this year, up 88 percent year-on-year.

Chinese new energy-vehicle (NEV) giant BYD (HKG: 1211, OTCMKTS: BYDDY) sold 1,084 vehicles in Japan in the first half of 2024, Nikkei's Chinese-language website said in a July 12 report citing data from the Japan Automobile Importers Association (JAIA).

The figure looks modest, though it's up 88 percent year-on-year, putting BYD at No. 14 in Japan's automobile import sales rankings, up from No. 19 last year, according to the report.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) doesn't release sales figures for Japan, but "other" sales, where the US electric vehicle (EV) maker makes up the majority, rose 4 percent to 2,748 units, the report said.

BYD announced its entry into Japan's passenger car market on July 21, 2022, and began selling EVs in the country on January 31, 2023.

The first model offered by the Chinese NEV maker in Japan was the Atto 3, which is known as the Yuan Plus in China and is BYD's first global model.

Last September, BYD launched the Dolphin compact EV in Japan. In June this year, BYD launched the Seal EV there.

As of now, BYD has yet to offer its plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) model in Japan.

BYD currently has 55 stores in Japan and aims to reach 90 by the end of 2024, according to figures announced last month.

In the first half of the year, BYD sold 203,404 NEVs overseas, up 173.80 percent year-on-year, contributing 12.6 percent of its total NEV sales of 1,612,983, according to data compiled by CnEVPost.

The latest figures mean that the Japanese market contributed 0.5 percent of BYD's overseas sales in the first half of the year.

In the first half of the year, Japan's imported vehicle sales were down 7 percent to 113,887 units, a decrease after 1 year, according to Nikkei.

Pure electric vehicles increased by 17 percent to 10,785 units, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the total number of cars imported into Japan, according to the report.

EVs' market share rose 2 percentage points to about 9.5 percent compared with the same period last year.

Among the brands that sold the most imported cars in Japan in the first half of the year, Germany's Mercedes-Benz came in first place with 25,692 units, up 0.4 percent. In second place was Germany's BMW, down 3 percent to 16,102 units.

JP Morgan expects BYD to reach 6 million global deliveries by 2026