Ford vs BYD: What the Sales Battle Means for WA Buyers

BYD outsold Ford in April 2026 to claim second place in the national new-vehicle market — behind only Toyota. For WA buyers, that shift is hard to ignore, whether you're weighing up a Ranger against a Shark 6, or trying to decide if a Chinese EV stacks up on a long run to Kalgoorlie.

The numbers behind the noise

BYD delivered a record 7702 vehicles across Australia in April — up 140 per cent on April 2025 — pushing past Mazda, Ford, Kia and Hyundai in the same month. Year-to-date, BYD sits fifth nationally with 25,243 sales, just 677 units behind Ford's 25,920.

What's driving BYD's surge? Record fuel prices are a big part of it. When Perth servo prices spike past $2.30 a litre, plug-in hybrids and EVs start looking a lot more attractive. BYD's top sellers so far in 2026 reflect that: the Sealion 7 electric SUV leads with 6248 sales, followed by the Shark 6 PHEV ute (4851), Sealion 8 PHEV large SUV (2491) and Sealion 6 PHEV medium SUV (2292).

Ford, meanwhile, had a rough April — 5748 sales, down 21.6 per cent on the same month last year, with declines across most of its range.

Ford isn't panicking — but it is responding

Ford Australia's marketing director Ambrose Henderson was direct about his view at the launch of the updated MY26.50 Ranger and Everest: this is noise, not a trend.

"We're here to run our own race, focus on the segments we're really strong in, and play where we can win," Henderson said.

On BYD's much-publicised shipment of nearly 5000 vehicles aboard its own car-carrying vessel — the BYD Zhengzhou — Ford pointed out it has been quietly leasing two dedicated ships running between Thailand and Australia for years, delivering Rangers and Everests every month.

"There's in my mind no new news about a boat of 5000 cars coming, because we do that every month," Henderson said.

Ford also pushed back hard on the idea that Chinese brands doing local chassis tuning gives them any real engineering edge. Henderson argued that designing a vehicle from scratch in Australia — as Ford does — is fundamentally different to adjusting suspension settings at the end of a development program.

"If you're not designing it here from scratch and put the right hardware in at the start, you can't get the tuning you want," he said. That matters for WA buyers who regularly cover unsealed outback roads, where suspension and durability count for more than they do on the freeway.

On pricing and specs, Ford confirmed that the MY26.50 Ranger and Everest updates include new entry-level variants and wider availability of the V6 diesel — moves that look directly responsive to Chinese brands pushing value hard at the bottom of the market.

What this means if you're buying now

For WA buyers, the competition between Ford and BYD is actually good news. Prices are coming down and standard specifications are going up across the board as brands fight for share.

If you're after a workhorse ute for regional WA — remote job sites, towing, outback tracks — the Ranger remains hard to beat on capability and parts availability. If your driving is mostly suburban Perth with occasional highway trips and fuel costs are front of mind, BYD's PHEV options are genuinely worth a test drive.

The market is more competitive than it has been in years. Use that to your advantage.