BYD's plan to fix its biggest problem

BYD Australia's new COO Stephen Collins has explained how BYD will shake its reputation for long service and parts delays under its now factory-backed leadership.

BYD shot to the mainstream in Australia off its range of extremely competitively priced electric and plug-in hybrid cars, there have been many stories of after-sale woes for owners.

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BYD has recently moved from a distributor model under EVDirect, which relied on a servicing deal via mycar centres, to a fully-fledged factory-backed outfit, and Collins said the brand is very much aware of the current issues for owners.

“We are very much aware that the back-end is critical to our long term success, that’s service, parts and warranty,” he told CarsGuide.

“We’ve just moved into a 20,000 square meter parts warehouse here in Melbourne, we’re rapidly filling it, we’re planning to have another parts warehouse in Queensland, and we may have other, smaller parts warehouses around the country.”

“So we’re investing in making sure we’ve got those parts available, we have all the systems and processes in place to get them to dealers and get cars repaired as quickly as possible.”

“One thing we’re certainly working hard to improve is the wait time. For service, currently it’s too long. Every single dealer we appoint now needs to have full capacity to service. We have around 90 dealers right now which are operational and nearly all of which will have full service operations, and going forward we’re going to grow that more as our car park grows.”

“It’s a combination of having the systems, the people, and the infrastructure, and the investment in those parts warehouses is just one example.”

“My background is at Honda and Nissan so I’m very familiar with supply rates and fixing it. Fixing problems the first time is key to keeping your customers happy,” Collins explained.

“We’re also investing heavily in head office to make sure we’re ordering the right parts and we’re getting them out there and flying parts out for vehicles which might be off-the road, and doing all of those things which you would expect from a leading [car manufacturer]”

The newly-appointed boss of BYD’s premium Denza arm Mark Harland added even basic things like training and tools were not present at the beginning of the brand’s explosive growth in Australia.

“Even in the early days of BYD [in Australia] there wasn’t a lot of experience in the country for EV repairs, right? So even if we had the parts - did the shop have the training? Did they have the right tools?”

“I don’t think anyone expected us to grow as fast as we did, so we’re just bursting at the seams just running to catch up with the parts and service and training and all those things,” he said.

Collins said even with the brand’s ambitions to be a top-three automaker in 2026 “getting it right” on the aftersales support in the next year was “ambitious - but we think it’s possible.”

“We want to be a top brand, we want to be a top player. On the BYD side we want to move from a challenging brand to more of a leadership position.”

BYD’s headquarters will be a busy place in the next 12 months, not only as it plans to get on top of its after-sales support, but also thanks to its plans to add at least four more models before the end of 2026.

The Atto 1 small electric hatch and Atto 2 small electric SUV have just hit the market, while the Sealion 5 cost-leading plug-in hybrid and the Sealion 8 flagship three-row SUV will be added in 2026.

Other possibilities could include the electric version of the Sealion 8, as well as a BYD version of the FangChengBao Titanium 7, which just debuted branded as the BYD TI 7 at the Bangkok motor show.