Two versions of BYD’s Australian privacy policy now exist, and the difference between them is instructive. The first named 16 destinations for Australians’ data, China among them, and reserved the right to gather information through surveillance activities. The second says none of that.
What forced the edit was not a regulator. Four Corners put questions to the carmaker, and two days later it answered that the document had undergone a review and been updated. The new text reached BYD’s Australian website 76 minutes before the company sent it to the program.
Readers who followed that text found it described itself as no longer covering vehicles, redirecting them to a separate document held inside BYD’s app.
Privacy law specialists found little comfort in either draft. Katharine Kemp, who studies connected vehicles at UNSW, read the original as evidence that BYD’s data practices warranted close scrutiny. The replacement opens by declaring that the company values and respects customer privacy, a phrase she dismissed as fluff, noting that the weakest policies tend to begin exactly that way.
The substance barely moved. Australian vehicle data stays in Australia under both versions, yet nothing in either blocks a transfer abroad, and the Privacy Act would allow one. BYD insists Chinese authorities cannot reach Australian records and that it has never handed them over and would not. Chinese national security legislation obliges companies to assist the state when asked.
BYD entered Australia in 2022. It expects to sell about 100,000 vehicles here this year, nearly twice its 2025 total.
