CHINA: Geely Tops China Sales, Beijing Adds EV Quotas and BYD Recalls 90,000 Hybrids | 24 Feb 2026

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Welcome back to EV News, China.

Today, Geely tops China sales.

Beijing adds EV quotas.

And BYD recalls 90,000 hybrids.

Plus, stay tuned.

Later in the show, I'll tell you how university researchers

have developed a water-based battery

that uses tofu brine as its electrolytes.

Welcome to EV News, China.

The podcast dedicated to the world's largest

electric vehicle market every day.

You hear the latest headlines, insights, and analysis

from the heart of China's booming EV industry.

And I decode how fast moving developments

in the East shaped the global landscape.

Geely sold the most electric vehicles last month in January

in China.

Geely actually sold a total of 270,000 vehicles in January.

And that tops China's domestic passenger car market.

And it unseats BYD for the first time in years.

The shift came as a key prop for EV demand-faded.

While China's purchase tax exemption on EVs ended

at the end of 2025 and now buyers face a halved reduction.

Instead, the change sparked the year-end buying spree

that pulled demand forward.

But left January with no pent-up DV demand.

BYD took the hit.

In January, BYD's EV sales totaled 210,000 down 30%

on the same month a year ago and 50% month on month.

But that's unkind, like I say, because of real changes.

The drop ranked among the steepest declines BYD's recorded.

Geely went the other way.

It posted year-on-year and month-on-month growth in January,

something that other major automakers couldn't manage.

The group had fresh products at the sharp end of the market,

like the Galaxy Starship 7, a compact SUV starting at US$13,700

equivalent using their own hybrid system called the Raytheon EMI Hybrid.

Geely also had momentum at the top.

Zika, its premium brand, merged back into Geely in December last year,

delivered 23,852 vehicles, double its year-ago figure,

though down 21% month-on-month.

Exports added another lever.

Geely exported 60,506 vehicles in January.

That was up 121% year-on-year.

And up 50% month-on-month, BYD shipped more vehicles overseas.

Just over 100,000 vehicles overseas in January.

That was up 43.3%.

With exports just under half of BYD's business,

something that I've talked about on this spin-off podcast a while,

how Chinese companies increasingly need to look overseas to maintain growth.

Now, Beijing's municipal transport authority will issue an extra 80,000 EV purchase quotas.

This year, lifting the total to 180,000.

The authority announced the change on 15 February

and framed it as a direct response to a faltering local market.

Beijing has run a lottery-based license plate quota system since 2011,

built to ease traffic congestion and cut air pollution.

This year's uplift counts as one of the city's most significant quota expansions to date.

It comes with strings.

All 80,000 apply only to pure BEVs, battery electric vehicles,

and excludes plug-in hybrids or EREVs, which is extended-range electric vehicles.

Beijing will start to hand them out from the 26th of May.

Beijing will also keep its regular quota allocation of $100,000 on a separate timetable,

split between 20,000 combustion vehicles and 80,000 NEV vehicles.

Most of the new supply targets households without a car of the additional 80,000,

60,000 go to car-free families, and 20,000 go to individual applicants.

Now, let's talk a little bit about BYD.

Recalling 87,762 units of one of its hybrids, it's called the Qin Plus DMI plug-in hybrid.

It's a sedan sold in China, and it covers cars built from as back as early as 2021.

China's State Administration for Market Regulation, the SAMR, has overseen the recall.

The fault is the battery management system, BMS controller.

Compacitors in the controller may contain micro-cracks,

which can overheat the internal circuits that can cut power with no warning.

Whilst driving, in severe cases, it could trigger a thermal event.

BYD's main fix comes via an over-the-air update.

The update recalibrates BMS safety parameters to detect capacitor anomalies more precisely.

If the software flags a physical defect, it triggers an alert,

telling the driver to go to a dealer, BYD will then replace the BMS controller entirely free of charge.

The recall lands hard. It exceeded 300,000 vehicles sold in October alone,

with plug-in hybrids at BYD driving a big share of the sales.

A fault that can stop a car mid-journey or even worse

tests how well BYD's relentless growth can hold up under scrutiny and stress.

Now, Hyundai have a new EV, and it's not called an Ioniq number.

It's called the Alexio, and it's built in China,

and China will ship these overseas to begin with to Australia.

Hyundai will bring the China-built Alexio down under to pitch at the heart of the midsize SUV

market, dominated right now by the likes of Tesla and BYD.

The Alexio comes from the Beijing Hyundai joint venture with BAIC Motor.

Hyundai designed it as its first dedicated EV for Chinese buyers,

then decided that those Chinese buyers shouldn't be the ones having all the fun.

The export play mirrors Kia's approach with the EV5,

that's a China-built model now fighting for share in Australia.

So, what's it like under the skin?

Alexio is a 400-volt version of Hyundai's EGMP architecture,

a single front-mounted motor that's 160 kilowatts,

and an 88 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion phosphate battery pack.

As for range, Hyundai says 562 kilometers, that's WLTP, not the China cycle,

on the standard trim, 546, a smidge down for the elite trim.

For context, a base model Y is 100 kilometers less than that.

Charging is 150 kilowatts DC, which is, I think, you know, we get very obsessed

though with very ultra-fast charging out of China.

I think for many people, depending on how you use the vehicle,

150 kilowatts is very serviceable.

That is a 10 to 18 38 minutes, it's all about the charge curve, isn't it?

Inside a 27-inch display spans the dashboard,

backed by a separate driver instrument cluster.

Let's talk a little bit about a new MG plug-in hybrid,

seen in camouflage wrap at the moment.

This is a test mule, they reckon, turning up near the Halol plant in Gujarat.

The vehicle, awesome registration plates that give a hint to what it was doing,

about 40 kilometers from the factory.

Now this SUV, which was seen, I think, being operated by MG Motor India,

traces itself back to the Wuling Starlight 560, which is what it sold as in China.

In India, it'll wear an MG badge though, right now it's codenamed internally 520.

The mule has a boxy SUV silhouette, roof rails, 18-inch wheels,

and at 4.7 meters long, it's a large five-seater sitting above the current MG

hectare in overall dimensions.

We'll see where that car turns up in India.

It'll be a 1.5-litre engine with an electric motor on the front axle,

and they say a 20 kilowatt hour battery pack, which is LFP chemistry,

underpinning the pure electric range on the China cycle of 100 to 125 kilometers.

Don't do too much Indian EV news on this podcast, although there is a very interesting

Indian EV scene that we perhaps maybe talk about a little bit more this year.

Xiaomi has confirmed its new electric vehicle, but this is one of the scooters Xiaomi makes.

And it's worth talking about, because depending on the regulations of where you are around the

world, and many of these are regulated off of roads and off of pavements, therefore some countries

have electric scooters entirely illegal, that many people do buy them from China,

and run them where they live, Xiaomi has confirmed its new electric scooter, Six Ultra.

And this is interesting, this is their range-topper electric scooter, also listed the Ultra on its

international website, alongside the light, the standard, the pro and the max variants.

There's a global launch plan, the Ultra has a date February 28th, we are four days away from it,

the Xiaomi launch. In Barcelona, we're going to get a bunch of tech actually from Xiaomi,

from phones to headphones and scooters as well. The electric scooter uses a 500 watt motor that

can peak at 1200 watts, delivering 45 Newton meters of torque and a top speed of 15 miles an hour,

or 25 kph. The battery is 585 watt hours, they say 46 miles or 75 kilometers of range,

a meaningful step up they say from the electric scooter Six Max, and it will climb at 25% inclines

as well. The Ultra runs on a 12 inch tubeless ultra-range tires, adding front and rear suspension,

dual disc brakes as well, a three inch TFT display shows speed and battery status,

and of course it's all waterproof as well. Interesting, I love the idea of micromobility,

but it doesn't have a huge place either on the main podcast or the spin-off show,

but still super interesting. Right, we'll take a break, we'll come back in a second,

and talk more about Ford, warning about China, and why ExPung want to sell you an EV that you

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details. Welcome back to the podcast, X-Pungs E Vitaal, electric, vertical, take off and landing.

Subsidiary called Aridge, formerly X-Pung Aero HT, wants to sell you a vehicle that carries

its own aircraft. It calls it the land aircraft carrier. And now it's moved from concept chatter

to pre-production units. They're making it in their Guangzhou facility. This is a six wheeler,

the actual car, the vehicle itself. A six wheel range extended van with a two seat electric

aircraft that lives in the cargo bay or the bed of the truck. The ground module, the car,

the truck if you like, is an 800 volts E rev system with 620 miles in total per charge.

It drives all six wheels. It's a proper six wheeler. It has rear wheel steering. It seats up to

five and uses coach style rear doors. The aerial module, when you're ready to go airborne, sits

on six rotors with a carbon fiber fuselage. Foldable arms and propellers help it fit inside the van.

Our Aridge uses a single lever control system and offers both manual and fully autonomous

flight modes with automated take off and automatic autonomous navigation backed by a full safety

suite. This is a fascinating combination of vehicles. Aridge has made the handover from road

to air, a party trick. A single touch sequence opens the rear hatch, slides the aircraft out on rails,

extends the landing gear, drops the vehicle's suspension and sends the van forward. The aircraft

is left sitting behind, ready to lift off vertically. The cargo bay doubles as a dedicated

charging station and the system will do 30 to 80% in 18 minutes. So they've actually built a

120,000 square meter factory in Guangzhou. What they say is the first facility globally

to apply automotive scale assembly to EVTOL production. Its targeted time, its endurance

is 30 minutes per aircraft. They want to make 10,000 of them a year and deliver the first one

by the end of this year. This sits very much in the sci-fi slash James Bond gadget section of the

podcast and I'm totally here for it. Now, Ford's chief executive, Jim Farley, has stepped up his

public warning about China. He sees superior technology, lower prices and state subsidies

driving China globally. Speaking to investors on the queue for 2025 earnings call, Mr Farley put

pricing power at the center of the threat. He described an oversubsidized hyper competitive

market where Chinese brands can set new floors for prices and he pointed to strain at home.

Mr Farley said the Chinese domestic market fell 25% year over year in January. If the trend holds,

he said Ford must future prefix cost base to match the new pricing reality. Yeah, he's one of those

automotive CEOs who has a lot to say about China and I think pretty much most of what he says is

pretty much bang on. Let's finish off by talking about this. A new battery and we've talked a lot

about batteries, solid state, semi solid state, liquid solid hybrid is the latest phrase that

we've been using at sodium ion, lithium metal. How about this one? Tofu brine. Researchers from

City University of Hong Kong and Southern University of Science and Technology have developed a

water based battery that uses tofu brine as its electrolytes. That's the bit that moves between

the cathode and the anode. The team uses a neutral pH electrolyte and describes the battery as

non toxic, non flammable and smelling a little bit fishy. No, they didn't say that. The headline

claim is about cycle life. They say the battery achieves over 120,000 charge cycles and typically

these days those estimates are made not by doing 120,000 for charge and discharges because it's

a conveniently round number like that donut battery that's meant to do 100,000. It's a wonderfully

convenient number and it doesn't mean they've done that but there are certain conditions that you

can set in testing that indicate levels of degradation. Either way, 120,000 could be 100,000

or 60 or 40 or 25. It doesn't really matter because typical EV lithium ion packs achieve maybe 3,000

charge cycles. Grid scale LFP can be between 6 and 10,000 and so that's the level of lifetime

of battery before something will maybe go off to recycling. So 120,000 charge cycles is if it's

not pie in the sky because they've not actually done it, it's certainly more than is required,

more than adequate I would say. Safety and disposal are also part of the pitch lithium ion cells

have well documented thermal risks but then again we find lithium ion cells in pretty much

everything. If you look around you right now you'll see a lithium ion battery in something,

maybe even the device you're listening to my voice right now on and yet they're not all

blowing up left right and centre. Now aqueous batteries have long hit a hard ceiling because

water breaks down at high voltages which constrains performance whereas this design

uses organic electrodes with a neutral electrolyte to address the higher voltage barrier.

Even so the likely home probably won't be in the cars that you and I drive, the technology is

described as best suited to stationary storage, things like solar and wind grid balancing, data

centre backup, AI data centre backup and rural electrification and boy are these things important

because I've talked on the main podcast of EV News Daily recently about the need for replacing

a lot of that base level storage generation. There's a nuclear facility we have here called

Sizewell B and they're applying for 20 more years of operation and I understand the argument

that well nuclear provides that base load, that level that's always there. Yeah we can do that

with renewables and storage without all the risks of nuclear and it's so much cheaper as well.

The next step looks like chemistry and less like chemistry and more like manufacturing because

commercial viability will depend on whether that chemistry can come out of the lab and be made

cost effectively at industrial scale and perform reliably. That's unanswered but it's interesting

technology and that's your podcast for today. See you tomorrow.

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CHINA: Geely Tops China Sales, Beijing Adds EV Quotas and BYD Recalls 90,000 Hybrids | 24 Feb 2026

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