Just last month, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu laid out an ambitious goal during the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting, and that’s to become the world’s largest automaker within five years. “BYD will truly become the No. 1 automaker globally in terms of scale in five years,” he said.

Now, one of the company’s top executives believes that goal can be achieved even without cracking one of the world’s biggest automotive markets.

Speaking to the Financial Times, BYD EVP Stella Li said the Chinese automaker can overtake Toyota through organic growth alone, without acquiring another car company and without selling passenger vehicles in the United States.

BYD Eecutive Vice President, Stella Li

“We don’t need the US market to achieve that,” Li said.

It’s a bold claim considering the gap BYD still needs to close. Toyota sold about 10.5 million vehicles worldwide in 2025 across its gasoline, diesel, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, hydrogen fuel-cell (Mirai) and battery-electric lineup. BYD, by comparison, delivered around 4.5 million vehicles, all of them new-energy vehicles, including battery-electric and plug-in-hybrid models.

Even so, BYD’s momentum outside China has been hard to ignore. The company has already overtaken Tesla in global EV sales and continues to expand aggressively across Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Australia. In Europe alone, BYD’s market share climbed to 2.8% in May, enough to move ahead of Ford, Tesla and Nissan.

The same growth story is unfolding in the Philippines. Since ACMobility took over local distribution, BYD has become one of the country’s fastest-growing automotive brands, with demand for its electrified lineup continuing to rise despite supply constraints. In fact, based on data from the 2025 Philippine Auto Sales, BYD is now in the top three, just behind Mitsubishi and Toyota, respectively.

Five years is a long time in the auto industry. Overtaking Toyota will require BYD to more than double its current global sales while Toyota continues to sell more than 10 million vehicles a year. But if BYD maintains its current pace of overseas expansion, Wang’s bold prediction may no longer sound as far-fetched as it did just a month ago.