BYD’s 100,000 Pre-Orders for Great Tang Mask a 55% Profit Slide and Battery Crunch

BYD's flagship SUV launch delayed to June as Blade battery supply fails to keep pace with 100,000+ reservations; Q1 net profit slumps 55% amid domestic price war.

China’s dominant electric-vehicle maker BYD finds itself in an awkward spot: demand for its upcoming flagship SUV is overwhelming supply, while its bottom line is under pressure from a brutal price war at home. The Shenzhen-based company has delayed the market launch of the Great Tang to 8 June from an initial target of May, not because of weak interest but because production cannot keep pace with orders. More than 100,000 reservations had been placed within two weeks of the model’s unveiling at the Beijing Auto Show, with the first 24 hours alone accounting for over 30,000. The starting price is 250,000 yuan (around €32,000).

The hold-up is a shortage of the second-generation Blade battery, which CEO Wang Chuanfu has acknowledged is struggling to meet surging demand from vehicles equipped with BYD’s fast-charging platform. The Great Tang, which uses that very battery, promises a China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle (CLTC) range of up to 950 kilometres and can recharge from 10% to 70% in five minutes. Yet translating those specs into deliveries depends on ramping up cell production fast enough to clear the backlog.

The battery bottleneck comes at a painful time. In the first quarter of 2026, BYD’s net profit tumbled 55.4% to 4.09 billion yuan, while earnings per share halved to 0.45 yuan from 1.04 yuan a year earlier. Revenue still managed to beat initial market expectations, helped by better-margin vehicles from BYD’s premium sub-brands, but the overall margin compression reflects the ferocious price competition that has gripped the Chinese car market. The outgoing Tang L model is already feeling the shift: its April sales in China slumped to just 791 units, as buyers clearly hold out for the successor.

BYD’s international business provides a crucial counterweight. Overseas deliveries of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles hit 134,542 units in April, up 70.9% year on year. In Europe, first-quarter registrations of BYD electric cars in the EU, EFTA and the UK surged more than 155%, prompting the group to lift its 2026 export target to 1.5 million vehicles. Total group deliveries in April reached roughly 314,000 units, a month-on-month recovery of 6.2% from March, though still below the year-ago level.

The company is also betting heavily on its own charging infrastructure to sustain long-term growth. BYD plans to operate 20,000 “Flash Charging” stations nationwide by the end of 2026; currently 4,239 are active. The stations use direct-current chargers with more than one megawatt of power. In a demonstration, a vehicle reached 97% charge in eight minutes and 26 seconds, and a nine-minute session was shown to deliver enough energy for up to 988 kilometres of driving. If BYD can deploy this capability at scale, it could ease range anxiety and strengthen its hand in the domestic market.

Behind the scenes, the company’s Zhengzhou factory is built for velocity. A body-in-white rolls off the line every minute, the site spans 10.67 square kilometres, and automation stands at 98%. BYD also produces battery cells, motors and control systems on site, claiming that a single cell is completed every three seconds. But the gap between manufacturing muscle and battery-cell output shows that even highly automated systems can face bottlenecks when demand for a new generation of components explodes.

Investors took some comfort from the overall picture. BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares closed at HK$110.30, gaining 4.95% on the day. The path to turning that optimism into sustained earnings growth, however, runs through the battery supply chain. Until the Blade-cell constraints are resolved, every new pre-order for the Great Tang is a promise that cannot yet be fulfilled – and in a market where rivals are cutting prices daily, delays can quickly erode excitement.