BYD Slashes Prices Aiming for Bigger Sales

Chinese carmaker BYD still fights to make its dream of becoming the world's number one carmaker come true but sales remained pretty low in the last couple of months. But the company hopes that greater sales will come in the near future as five of its main car models will by up to 19 percent cheaper as part of a new campaign supposed to lure more buyers into BYD dealerships.

Most buyers walked away from BYD models mostly because government incentives for purchasing small cars are no longer offered. The Chinese carmaker thus lost ground in front of the foreign competition, despite the fact that most of their models are cheaper than the majority of the vehicles in the same class.

Instead of growing bigger and reach new sales milestones, BYD was forced to eliminate 100 dealers across China in the first month of the year because it couldn't reach the goal it has imposed for 2010. BYD wanted to sell a total of 800,000 vehicles in 2010 but, in mid-summer, company executives lowered the goal to just 600,000 vehicles.

And even so, BYD failed to achieve this milestone, delivering only 520,000 vehicles in 2010. 2011 is expected to be a somewhat better year, as forecasts predict a 10 percent growth to just 550,000 cars.

The Chinese company delivered a total of 52,054 units in January, returning a drop of 15 percent as compared to the same month of the previous year. February is expected to bring a decrease as well but, thanks to the price cutting programme, sales are expected to rebound as soon as March.