BYD moves away from Mycar servicing to take maintenance in house

Increased dealer footprint and new aftersales manager to spearhead BYD’s efforts for buyers to come back to showrooms for servicing.

BYD Australia will address one of the biggest criticisms of its aftersales support by moving servicing in-house to its expanded dealer network and away from Mycar, the independent servicing network formerly known as Kmart Tyre and Auto.

That is according to David Smitherman, CEO of BYD’s Australian importer EVDirect, who told Drive at a recent event the change would give BYD better control of the customer’s experience.

“That’s an avenue for us in those areas where we don’t have dealers, a Mycar service is available. But if you go to our dealerships, by and large, there’s sales and services available,” he said.

“Originally, Mycar was set up, but now we’re moving [servicing to dealerships].

“Mycar has served its purpose for us, and it’ll continue to be part of the business, but we want to make sure the customer’s always looked after.”

When BYD commenced a rollout of its electric cars in late 2021, it signed a deal with Mycar – formerly Kmart Tyre & Auto – to service the then-upcoming Atto 3 mid-size SUV, as well as a limited number of E6 and T3 vehicles sold to the public.

But with sales growing and an ambition to double its sales in 2024 – to about 2600 deliveries – and again in 2025 (to about 5200 sales), distributor EVDirect is looking to keep customers coming back into its showrooms.

It has recently appointed a new General Manager of Aftersales, James Stride – who has held similar positions at MG, Volkswagen, and the various importers for Peugeot, Citroen and Maserati in Australia over the last 20 years – to oversee and overhaul the customer service experience.

“We’re really keen to make sure we put customers first,” Mr Smitherman said.

“We know that customers buy [around] nine vehicles in their lifetime, so we want to make sure there is a really strong aftersales department looking after customers, and we want to make sure people are referring their friends and their colleagues and families.

“So aftersales is a huge priority, which is why we’ve got a new aftersales general manager in the company.”

EVDirect is also looking to expand BYD’s dealer footprint in Australia, from about 25 today to 70 by the end of 2025.

“It’s aspirational, there’s a lot of work to get it done. Currently we’re at 25, so there’s a lot of growth to occur to get to there,” Mr Smitherman said.

“Majorly, at the moment, we’re metro [area] focused, so we want to get provincial, we want to be covered off in country Victoria, country New South Wales, etc.

“We really want to make sure we’ve got the national coverage.”

The rural expansion of BYD’s network is also expected to support the launch of its first ute, called the Shark, due later this year, as well as a new mid-size SUV due soon.

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