BYD strikes partnership with car rental firm Car Inc

• Car Inc plans to expand its purchases of BYD vehicles in the summer of 2025.
• Car Inc put the first BYD vehicles it purchased into service during the Labor Day holiday earlier this month.

BYD (HKG: 1211, OTCMKTS: BYDDY) has entered into a strategic partnership with Chinese car rental company Car Inc to expand its potential customer base for its vehicles.

The companies signed a strategic cooperation agreement today at BYD’s global headquarters in Shenzhen, in the presence of BYD chairman and president Wang Chuanfu and Car Inc chairman Yu Hongfei, according to an announcement from BYD today.

The two sides reached an in-depth cooperation intent on the 2025 summer vehicle procurement program and signed a strategic cooperation agreement to promote the sustainable development of green mobility and the car rental market, the announcement said.

This is a further deepening of the cooperation between the two following their first collaboration in April, BYD said, adding that Car Inc put the first BYD vehicles it procured, including the Qin Plus DM-i and Fang Cheng Bao’s Bao 8, into operation during the Labor Day holiday earlier this month.

Based on favorable market feedback, Car Inc plans to expand its purchases in the summer of 2025, according to the announcement.

The two companies will also cooperate in areas including expanding the rollout of new energy vehicle (NEV) models, conducting in-depth test drives and joint marketing.

Car Inc is a car mobility service provider in China that offers car rental and fleet leasing services to individual and corporate customers, according to a profile on its website.

The company is China’s largest directly operated car rental platform, with a 160,000-vehicle-sized fleet, a service network covering more than 300 cities and 175 million registered users, BYD’s announcement noted.

It’s a rare BYD partnership with a car rental company in the past few years, as the NEV giant targets regular users in the passenger car market.

Just last week, BYD launched its new all-electric sedan e7, which starts at RMB 103,800 ($14,400) and is expected to be one of the car-buying options in the shared mobility market.

The company sold 380,089 NEVs in April, up 21.34 percent year-on-year and up 0.71 percent from March.

In the January-April period, BYD sold 1,380,893 NEVs, up 46.98 percent year-on-year.

BYD aims to sell 5.5 million vehicles in 2025, including more than 800,000 in overseas markets.

($1 = RMB 7.2208)