Correct, it's not a pure comparison, which is precisely what I'm pointing out. They didn't sell 300k electric cars, they sold 300k cars, some of which were electric, some of which were hybrid drivetrains, and then compared that to actual electric car numbers, which so far is tesla and everyone else.

An uncareful reader would take that to mean BYD is catching up to Tesla in the electric car market, which would be remarkable, but ultimately that isn't a true statement.

That isn't to say BYD isn't remarkable on their own, they outsold VW group's EV's 2:1 in Q2, which are the most up-to-date numbers available. That's still fewer than Tesla, and a smaller gain Q1-Q2 than Tesla, but for a manufacturer completely locked out of the US market, it's really impressive.

I would assume that they'd quickly overtake Tesla if the US lifted their de facto embargo on non-domestic cars, given that their unit costs are substantially lower.

BYD have conflated their hybrid and pure EV sales for several years now to try and make their EV sales volume look more impressive. It's disappointing they still do it. Here's the same misleading press release from Jan 2022:

https://en.byd.com/news/byd-starts-strong-in-2022-with-sales...

"New Energy Vehicles". Every time they do it, large sections of the media report them as a "Tesla challenger". I do agree though that they are making increasingly good EVs.

I don't see that as them being intentionally misleading inasmuch as they're trying to promote their NEV trademark.

It's more a fault of the media failing to report this accurately, especially being that in their press release linked above, they have broken out how many hybrids and how many EV's they've sold.