With the New Year comes new hope and Chinese automaker BYD Auto is confident that this will be its most successful 12 months to date.

The company has raised its sales targets for 2010 by 14 per cent thanks to the pending release of the all-electric e6 saloon car and the Chinese government’s green car friendly stimulus package which it hopes will boost local sales.

BYD now hopes to sell 800,000 units this year, up from its previous target of 700,000. If achieved, the sales goal would represent a near doubling of its expectations for 2009 – the company has sold just over 400,000 cars during the previous year.

Critics have described its target as “optimistic” following lacklustre sales of the F3DM. The world’s first mass produced plug-in hybrid electric vehicle has only been sold to a relatively small number of fleet customers and has yet to be made available in BYD stores anywhere in China. You can read more about BYD’s troubles and hopes of a breakthrough in our recent Green Piece column.

The e6 is expected to go on sale in the first quarter of 2010 and will appear in both Spain and the USA later this year.