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Franco Bornancini’s iPhone buzzed relentlessly in his glass-walled office at a BYD dealership in Córdoba, Argentina, racking up 90 customer questions during an hour-long meeting. A few feet away, the sales floor buzzed with the energy of a tech product launch.
“We’re like the Apple of vehicles,” said Bornancini, the dealership’s sales manager. BYD, the Chinese EV manufacturer, isn’t just selling cars—it’s offering customers “a different way of living,” he said.
BYD sales reps are picking up weekend shifts just to keep pace, delivering 12 to 15 cars a day to customers trading in gas-powered vehicles for a brand that many had never heard of just six months earlier.
EV market share in Argentina has soared in the second quarter of this year to 6 percent of new cars sold, including all-electric and plug-in hybrid models, an increase from less than 1 percent in the second quarter of 2025, according to the Global South Center for Clean Transportation at the University of California, Davis.
That growth rate would be stunning if not for the way it follows a pattern seen in other emerging markets. Analysts call this a “leapfrog” moment, driven by investment from Chinese automakers and the economic interests of the host countries. The result is skyrocketing EV sales growth that exceeds progress in many of the world’s leading economies—a trend now supercharged by oil price volatility tied to the Iran war.
Indeed, Argentina may have a higher EV market share than the United States by the end of 2026 or early 2027, based on sales projections.
Many American and European automakers treated places like Argentina as peripheral—too volatile, too small, too complicated. BYD saw something different: an untapped market with millions of potential customers.
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