"No. 1 Carmaker" BYD Sells 100 Electric Cars in 8 Months

BYD Auto, the Chinese carmaker who's hoping to become the world's number 1 auto manufacturer by 2025, sold a total of 100 electric cars in eight months, in spite of the company's enthusiastic task to sell between 3,000 and 4,000 units in 2009. According to gasgoo.com, the F3DM was launched in Shenzhen, south China, in December 2008, and the company set a price tag of 149,800 Chinese yuan ($21,944).

The F3DM has never been an attractive model as sales were extremely slow since its official launch. In June 2009 however, the company delivered ten units to the municipal government of Shenzhen. BYD already announced plans to debut the car in several other Chinese cities, including Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Qingdao, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Changsha, Jinan, Tianjin, and Wuhan.

Separately, BYD Auto recently announced its extremely optimistic plans to become the world's number one carmaker by 2025 and take the first position in China by 2015. It expects to sell more than 10 million units per year by 2025, even if the company aims to reach sales of 400,000 cars this year.

"We have plenty of time to become China's top carmaker by 2015 with a complete and mature product line-up. I am sure we can achieve the target earlier than scheduled," Wang Jianjun, deputy general manager of BYD Auto Sales Co told the China Daily. "BYD was also making efforts to overtake Toyota to become the world's No 1 carmaker in 2025, with annual sales of over 10 million cars expected by that time," Wang said.