BYD's March sales plunge 41% year-on-year
BYD Co.'s auto sales fell 41 percent in March from a year earlier to 40,027 cars, said company spokesman Wang Jianjun.
The company is still struggling to regain the momentum it lost last summer, when sales began to soften.
The company sold 519,800 cars in 2010, up 17 percent from a year earlier. But that was well below the average industry sales gain of 32 percent. Moreover, BYD's profits last year fell 33 percent to 2.5 billion yuan.
In February, BYD slashed prices from 10 to 19 percent to prop up shaky sales.
Xia Zhibing, BYD's head of sales, subsequently wrote on his blog that the company, which is 10 percent owned by billionaire Warrant Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is "preparing for a price war."
The privately held BYD is headquartered in the southeast China city of Shenzhen.
