World Top 20 June 2014 (Special Edition)

Models - Record Edition (Again)

With a massive 29.238 plug-ins sold in June (And still without South Korea and Belgium numbers), the global market for electric cars broke this month the 28.709 units sold last December, a record many (Me included) thought it would last at least a couple of years, after all, it lasted just six months, to put these numbers into context, the same month last year had 16.017 units sold...

There were record sales from several models, like the Tesla Model S (3.933 units), Ford Fusion Energi (1.949) or the BYD Qin (1.055), and an impressive stat, 11(!) models sold more than 1.000 units last month.

After a hard fight, where the Model S changed positions with the Outlander PHEV in the fight for #2, the japanese SUV benefited from a good performance at home (1.300 sales in Japan), to win back the Silver Medal at the end of the counting.

Comparing this enlarged Top 20 from the first half of this year, with last December, we can envision several changes:

- Chevrolet Volt down three positions to #5;

- Ford Fusion Energi up three positions to #6, already having sold more this year (6.294) than in the whole 2013 (6.206);

- Chinese cars are making their presence felt, with 5 models in the Top 20 (Two in the Top 10), when last year there were only two (Chery QQ3 EV in #11 and BYD e6 in #17);

- The german duo, i3 and e-Up! are higher in the table, with the Beemer consistently improving its performance month after month;

- Renault models are still recovering from a horrible start this year, but the Zoe is already in shape, having been #9 in June, with 1.024 units. 

Because this is a full year edition, the ranking includes cars from #11 to #20, where we can see some interesting facts, like the #14 Volvo V60 Plug-In far away from last year performances (It ended in #7 last year), just like the Mitsu I-Miev, #17 this year, when in '13 it was a regular appearance in the Top 10.

Pl	WORLD	June	2014	%	'13Pl
1	Nissan Leaf	4.794	27.143	20	1
2	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	3.133	14.810	11	5
3	Tesla Model S	3.933	14.036	10	4
4	Toyota Prius Plug-In	1.825	10.922	8	3
5	Chevrolet Volt (1)	1.975	9.865	7	2
6	Ford Fusion Energi	1.949	6.295	5	9
7	BMW i3	1.241	5.396	4	20
8	BYD Qin	1.055	5.357	4	40
9	Kandi EV e)	1.414	5.329	4	N/A
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20	Ford C-Max Energi Chery QQ3 EV e) Renault Zoe Volkswagen e-Up! Volvo V60 Plug-In Smart Fortwo ED Renault Kangoo ZE Mitsubishi I-Miev (2) Zotye E20 BYD e6 Renault Twizy (3)	1.003 600 1.024 498 346 523 544 305 780 257 304	4.018 3.816 3.706 3.487 3.324 2.384 2.036 1.622 1.428 1.392 1.133	3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1	8 11 6 18 7 13 10 12 N/A 17 14
	TOTAL	29.238	136.042

Manufacturers - Ford on Fire

In the Manufacturers ranking, Ford is going from strength to strength, selling 3.164 units, climbing again and ending the month in #5.

Above it we've got Nissan in #1, again losing share, now it's at 20%, followed from a far by Mitsubishi and Tesla, fighting for #2. 

#4 Toyota has Ford right behind it and has to improve sales if it wants to keep its position, while Renault is back at #7, surpassing BYD.

Looking below the surprising #10 Kandi, we see three newcomers in the ranking: Zotye in #15, Porsche in #17 and Cadillac in #19, these last two outsold Honda in the ranking, which is a strange thing to see...

Pl	WORLD	June	2014	%	'13Pl
1	Nissan	4.852	27.253	20	1
2	Mitsubishi	3.469	16.848	12	3
3	Tesla	3.933	14.036	10	5
4	Toyota	1.916	11.468	8	4
5	Ford	3.164	11.327	8	7
6	Chevrolet	2.060	10.530	8	2
7	Renault	1.882	7.005	5	6
8	BYD	1.312	6.749	5	11
9	BMW	1.269	5.456	4	14
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20	Kandi e) Chery e) Volkswagen Volvo Smart Zotye Fiat Porsche Bolloré Cadillac Honda	1.414 600 664 346 523 780 166 124 82 100 66	5.329 4.013 3.830 3.345 2.384 1.437 1.016 731 531 403 401	4 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 0 0 0	N/A 9 13 8 10 23 18 22 17 30 15

(1) - Includes Holden Volt, Opel and Vauxhall Ampera;
(2) - Includes Peugeot iOn and Citröen C-Zero
(3) - Includes Nissan NMC

(e) - Estimate

Japan June 2014

The Sun is Shining Edition

Great month for the japanese EV market, there were 2.777 sales in Japan last month, selling a massive 1.000 units more than the same month last year, leading the EV Share up to 0,94%.

The Outlander PHEV (1.300 registrations) won for the first time since January the Best Seller Of the Month title.

Looking at the manufacturers ranking, Nissan (46%) continued ahead of Mitsubishi (45%), but the margin is now minimum.

Pl	Japan	June	2014	%	Pl '13
1	Nissan Leaf	1.205	6.801	46	1
2	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	1.300	5.753	39	2
3	Toyota Prius Plug-In e)	200	1.200	8	3
4	Mitsubishi I-Miev	41	507	3	4
5	Mitsubishi Minicab Miev	17	318	2	5
6	Mitsub. Minicab Miev Truck	14	95	1	6
	TOTAL	2.777	14.674	100

e) Estimate

Source:http://evn.blog.eonet.jp; insideevs.com

Europe June 2014 (2nd Update)

Always nice to be on the riverside...

Four in Four Edition

With 8.496 units sold in June, the European EV market grew 90% regarding the same month last year, continuing the solid growth that has been experiencing throughout the year.

Looking at the models ranking, the Outlander PHEV was again the Best Seller of the month, with 1.833 units, distancing itself from the #2 Nissan Leaf (1.131 units sold).

For the first time this year, four cars sold in the thousands, with the aforementioned Outlander PHEV and Nissan Leaf being two of them, but also the Tesla Model S (1.135 units) and the Renault Zoe (1.016) did it, a special mention for the french hatch performance, since it's only the third time it reaches this kind of sales, and it had been twelve months since the last time it did (1.358 units in June '13), this brilliant performance allowed it to jump two positions in the YTD ranking to #5.

Final mention for two newcomers, the VW e-Golf is slowly climbing its way into the Top 10 and the BMW i8  sports car already appears at the bottom of this new Top 25 (5 more than before) ranking, with 60 registrations.

Pl	Europe	June	2014	%	'13Pl
1	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	1.833	9.038	20	3
2	Nissan Leaf	1.131	7.109	16	1
3	Tesla Model S	1.135	5.330	12	7
4	BMW i3	731	4.762	11	12
5	Renault Zoe	1.016	3.669	8	2
6	Volkswagen e-Up!	498	3.487	8	11
7	Volvo V60 Plug-In	346	3.274	7	4
8	Renault Kangoo ZE	544	2.028	4	5
9	Smart Fortwo ED	222	1.126	3	9
10	Renault Twizy	320	1.066	2	10
11	Bolloré Blue Car	82	531	1	16
12	Citröen C-Zero	101	457	1	15
13	Toyota Prius Plug-In	59	456	1	12
14 15 15 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25	Mitsubishi I-Miev Volkswagen e-Golf Opel Ampera Peugeot iOn Porsche Panamera Plug-In Goupil G3 Peugeot Partner EV Citröen Berlingo EV Nissan e-NV200 Ford Focus Electric Renault Fluence ZE BMW i8	57 166 29 76 13 28 30 24 58 9 12 28	372 343 343 305 245 198 174 125 110 91 61 60	1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0	14 N/A 8 18 21     17 22 N/A N/A 24 19 N/A
	TOTAL	8.496	44.845

Markets Roundup June 2014

Kandies Galore

(I've Got) Kandi 

In the middle of a bullish Chinese EV market, the name Kandi came like a hurricane, shooting for the leadership in a few months, thanks to new government policies that make regular cars life harder, electric cars are growing, but also car sharing, and that's where Kandi EV is.   

Born last year in the chinese city of Hangzhou, Kandi is part of Geely (Chinese manufacturer also owner Of Volvo) and it's a breakthrough experiment, treating cars like a commodity, available in gigantic vending machines for the general public.

It's easy how they work: Put in your card, out pops a car. While it will take time for Kandi to build the 750 such facilities it has planned for Hangzhou, the service is already up and running, and looking for other urban areas to expand.

For just $3.25 per hour, you can rent one of the Kandi cars. They have a range of 75 miles and a top speed of 50 miles per hour. While that might seem limiting, the vehicles are intended for urban use and the city speed limits max out at about 30 in Hangzhou. Besides, the Chery QQ3 EV, best selling EV in China in the past years, has more or less the same performance and range.

Unlike Zipcar in the US or Bluecar in France, that play in an unregulated market, Kandi can say it's benefiting from a perfect storm, with electric cars growing due to government incentives, and car sharing becoming increasingly attractive because of stricter laws on private cars.

Emgrand PHEV: Geely's anti-Qin?

Left, Right and Center

Speaking of Geely, with the success of the Kandi EV, the chinese carmaker as a group (Kandi + Volvo) jumps to seventh place in this year group manufacturers ranking, with 7% share, behind GM (8%) and ahead of BYD (5%), BMW and VW Group, both with 4% share. With the lower (Kandi) and upper end (Volvo) of the market covered, all Geely needs to do is to launch a Geely "Qin" and have all bases covered, left, right and center, something no one still did:

- The #1 EV Group, Renault - Nissan, is very middle-market-centric, with the exception of the Twizy, both Renault and Nissan offerings are not too far from each other price-wise. All they need is to put Infinity and Dacia in the electric bandwagon;

- Mitsubishi, Tesla, Toyota and Ford play as standalone brands, so each of them only plays on their own natural territory;

- At least on paper, GM has all bases covered, with chinese Springo in the lower end, Chevrolet in midfield and Cadillac in the higher end of the market. Only, Springo monthly sales are counted in one digit in a booming market, while Cadillac, although a bit better, is still to enter in the hundred sales per month, meaning that in reality GM is really only Chevrolet;

- The other carmaker group to get close of having all bases covered is Volkswagen, where Porsche is doing (rather well) the Top Premium side of things, Audi is months away of covering the Lower Premium layer, leaving to VW the center of the market. The cheaper end of the market is still to be covered, but it won't be long for Das Auto brand to make some kind of low-cost-chinese-focused brand to do it.

Trends in the G7 

As mentioned before, China is going from strength to strength (0,21% EV share vs 0,15% last month), with monthly sales going up for the seventh month in a row(!) and new cars showing up almost every month.

The French market is also growing, pulling itself from doom and growing for the fifth consecutive time, while the USA and Germany are also doing well, nearing their all-time highs in June.

The two EV champs, Netherlands and Norway are a bit down on EV Share (4,58 % and 14,19% respectively), but keep on being the envy of everyone else.

Forecasts in the G7

Early this year, i made some forecasts regarding this year, let's see how they stack up against the results in the first half of the year:

USA - 110-130.000 units/year, Leaf #1; 

Given sales are at 55.000 i think the numbersd can end up a tiny bit higher than the 130K. The Leaf is #1 with some 3.000 ahead of the #2, good work here;

Japan - 36-39.000 units/year, Outlander #1;

The second semester is usually better in the Japanese EV market, but even so, with sales around 15K, it will be hard to reach the lower limit of this forecast. And the Leaf is some 1.500 units above the Outlander, a double miss here;

France - 15-18.000 units/year, Zoe #1;

Sales are still at 6.700 units, but with the ever-increasing sales upwards trend in France, i believe that the lower end of the forecast can be achieved. Zoe is #1, of course, with almost the double of sales of its runner-up, the Kangoo ZE;

Netherlands - 15-19.000 units/year, Outlander #1;

A welcome surprise, with sales at 9.000 units in the first half of the month, i think the 20K area can be achiveved with relative ease. The Outlander PHEV unsurprisingly dominates the market, with more than 2.000 units above the #2 V60 Plug-In;

Germany - 10.000 units/year, German Car #1;

In this Year One of the German Electric Car, sales are growing at a healthy pace (6.000 units YTD) and i think they can even double last years result (6.714 units). Not only the Leader is German (BMW i3), but the rest of the podium also belongs to the Vaterland (#2 VW e-Up! and #3 Smart Fortwo ED)

China - 23.000-28.000 units/year, Qin #1.

Another Year One, but here sales are going way above expectations, the numbers are already in the 20K area, with new players coming in every month and record sales being registered every month, i wouldn't be surprised if sales reached the 50K area by the end of the year. With so many surprises in the models ranking, no one really knows who will be the Best Selling Plug-In in China.

Global EV Share leaders 

For the first time ever, there's five markets above the 1% EV share hallmark, here they are:

1. Norway - 14,49%

2. Netherlands - 4,58%

3. Iceland - 2,20%

4. Sweden - 1,52%

5. Estonia - 1,05%

Questions for July

1 - Where will be beaten the next sales records?

2 - Who will be #1 in China?

3 - Wil the Outlander PHEV repeat the #1 in Italy?

4 - Will the Qin reach the 1.500 registrations?

5 - Who will be #1 in Austria?

6 - Will the BMW i3 recover Best Selling titles?

Portugal June 2014

Summer Festivals are always Fun

BMW All The Way Edition

BMW is back at #1 in the portuguese EV ranking, after selling 11 units in June, its best performance to date, ending the first half of the year with 43 units sold.

In #2 we have the Nissan Leaf, with 25 sales this year and third there's the Renault Zoe, selling 16 units, looking to beat last year performance of 22 units sold during the whole year.

This month marks the landing of the Outlander PHEV, it will be interesting to see if the japanese SUV will succeed in this predominantly BEV market.

In manufacturers ranking, BMW moved away from the competition, leading the race with 41% share, followed by Renault with 28% and Nissan, with 24%.

Pl	Portugal	June	2014	%	Pl '13
1	BMW i3	11	43	41	7
2	Nissan Leaf	1	25	24	3
3	Renault Zoe	2	16	15	5
4	Renault Twizy		12	12	1
5 6 7 8	Smart Fortwo ED Opel Ampera Mitsubishi I-Miev Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	1	4 2 1 1	4 2 1 1	6 8 9 N/A
	TOTAL	15	104	100

Source: Best Selling Cars Blog

China June 2014 (Second Update)

Party Crasher, this E20...

Dark Horse(s) Edition

Fascinating times in China, not only EV sales are going to straspheric heights, outrunning the previous month for the seventh(!) consecutive time and selling seven(!) times more cars than the same month last year (5.503 vs 832). As consequence of this, the EV share jumped to 0,21% and the chinese market overrun Japan as the second largest EV market in the world! And to think only Chinese brands and Tesla are selling here...

The models ranking is also evolving fast, with little known competitors, like the Kandi EV or Zotye E20, playing eye-to-eye with the established players.

...Just like the Smart Kandi

BYD is still #1, with its Qin continuing to improve sales (1.055 units, this month), but it's now closely followed by the Kandi EV, a vehicle built for a car-sharing network not unlike Bolloré in France, that has a goal of producing 100.000(!) EV's in the next couple of years.

Tesla is already #4, selling 958 units in June, and below the american car there is another meteoric career from another dark horse, that of the Zotye E20, after just four months in the market it's already selling 780 units per month and rising to #5 in the YTD ranking.

Another proof that things are changing fast, is that four out of the top 5 EV's in China have been launched on the market in the last 7 months...And there's another bunch of electric cars coming soon! (Denza EV, Venucia e30, BYD Tang...)

Pl	China	June	YTD	%	'13Pl
1	BYD Qin	1.055	5.357	27	9
2	Kandi EV e)	1.400	5.329	27	N/A
3 4 5	Chery QQ3 EV e) Tesla Model S Zotye E20	600 958 780	3.816 1.545 1.428	19 8 8	1 N/A N/A
	TOTAL	5.503	19.876	100

e) Estimate

Source: Best Selling Cars Blog; d1ev.com; http://247wallst.com/autos

Estonia June 2014

Walking by the sea is always nice...And good for your health!

A League of His Own Edition

22 EV's were sold in Estonia this June, placing the EV Share in 1.06%, a smidge above last April (1.05%), and making the Estonian market the fifth in EV share at the present time (The others being Norway, Netherlands, Sweden and Iceland).   

Looking at the ranking, the Nissan Leaf is in a different league (15 registrations), grabbing 76% of the market.

In a distant #2 we have the Mitsu I-Miev, scoring just 1 unit last month, followed by the Tesla Model S, #3 with 4 registrations in June and looking to pass the I-Miev soon.

Outside the podium the Renault Zoe and VW e-Up! land with their first registrations in this country.

Pl	Estonia	June	YTD	%	'13Pl
1	Nissan Leaf	15	87	76	1
2	Mitsubishi I-Miev	1	13	11	3
3 4 5 6 6 6	Tesla Model S BMW i3 Renault Zoe Volkswagen e-Up! Mia Electric Citröen C-Zero	4 1 1	9 2 1 1 1 1	8 2 1 1 1 1	4 N/A N/A N/A 2 N/A
	TOTAL	22	115	100

Source: mnt.ee