BYD, according to industry sources, has ordered 10 more PCTC (Pure Car and Truck Carrier) vessels from China Merchants Industry. Each car carrier is designed for 9,200 CEU – conventional units of capacity for standard cars. The cost of the order has not been disclosed, and BYD itself has not yet officially confirmed it.
Construction will be organized at the Jinling and Haimen shipyards, with vessel delivery scheduled for 2027–2029. After the order is fulfilled, BYD's own fleet will increase from eight to 18 vessels, and the total capacity will exceed 130,000 CEU. The new ships will add another 92,000 parking spaces.
These are Ro-Ro vessels: cars drive onto multi-deck levels themselves and leave the vessel in the destination port in the same way. This format is especially important for BYD amid rapidly growing exports. In August, the company exported 188,746 passenger cars from China, approaching the volumes of the largest Chinese exporters.
Its own fleet allows BYD to be less dependent on the availability of third-party car carriers and freight costs. This is especially important when scaling deliveries to Europe, Southeast Asia, and other regions: for an automaker, control over transportation becomes as important a factor as production capacity.
However, 130,000 CEU is the one-time capacity of the fleet, not the number of cars that the vessels will transport per year. Therefore, directly calculating this figure as annual export potential is incorrect.