China's BYD Auto posts $106M second-quarter profit, but not from clean vehicles

Vehicle demand in China, the world's largest automotive market, continues to rise and that has led to BYD Auto reporting a second-quarter profit of 717 million yuan ($106 million U.S. at the current exchange rate). BYD's net income for the first half also shot up from the 1.18 billion yuan ($173 million U.S.) reported last year to 2.42 billion yuan ($356 million U.S.) for 2010. Riding the hot streak, BYD's sales sparked to the tune of a 50-percent increase over 2009 numbers and brought in 24.2 billion yuan ($3.56 billion U.S.) for the company during the first six months of the year.

While we wish we could report that BYD's hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs) are selling like hot cakes and have contributed to the remarkable profits witnessed by the company, that's simply not the case. For BYD, sales of hybrid and EVs continue to amount to next to nothing, but China's recent decision to invest 100 billion yuan ($14.7 billion U.S.) into alternative-energy vehicles will hopefully provide BYD and other Chinese automakers with the funds needed to develop, produce and successfully market advanced technology vehicles.

[Source: Automotive News – sub. req.]