Sunday, November 30, 2014

World Top 10 October 2014

The Zoe is back with the Big Boys. And all it took was to include the Batteries...

Models - Zoe is Back

There were some 28.500 plug-ins sold last month, which is the third best month of the year and represents a 38% increase over the same month last year, with YTD sales nearing 260.000 units with two months to go, it won't be a surprise if the 300k barrier would be broken this year. 

To put that number in context, last year, the total sales number was 212.508, not bad, eh?

The podium places were deeply cemented over the year, so there's not much to talk about there (Although, the Nissan Leaf lost another point in share...), from the Fourth Place below is where the fun starts, the ever-improving  #8 BYD Qin (1.702 units, tenth consecutive record), distanced itself from the suddenly-slow selling Fusion Energi.

There was also a position change in the bottom place of the ranking, with the i-rejuvenated Renault Zoe (1.324 units) displaced the slower-selling Ford C-Max Energi (658 units) from the #10 spot. 

Segmenting the market by car sizes and types, you can see the Top 3 dominating their segments (C - Leaf; SUV - Outlander; E - Model S), the BMW i3 comfortable in the B-Segment leadership and the Ford Fusion also at ease on the D-Segment.

But, what about the other less visible segments?

Here's how they stand, in the A-Segment, the VW e-Up! is holding on to the leadership, despite the Smart Fortwo ED staying just 123 units behind and gaining ground (569 vs 464 in October), MPV's are Ford C-Max Energi territory, just like the LCV's are Renault's (Kangoo ZE), in the Pick-Up Truck segment, the Mitsu Minicab Miev Truck continues to soldier on alone, while in the Coupe/Sports Car niche, the Cadillac ELR (1.073 units) is losing ground to the BMW i8 every passing month and should see the german car pass it like a bullet somewhere in the months left to the year end.

PlWORLDOct.YTD%'13Pl
1Nissan Leaf5.23150.130191
2Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV2.56927.115105
3Tesla Model S2.35224.02994
4Chevrolet Volt (1)1.56918.00172
7BMW i32.09913.373520
8BYD Qin1.70211.175440
9Ford Fusion Energi69610.15249
10Renault Zoe1.3247.47236

TOTAL28.495258.453


Manufacturers -  

Toyota has been under-performing these last months, and Renault is having a Renaissance, being the #5 best selling brand in October, with 1.957 units, its best result of the year so far, let's see if the Battery Included policy will continue to improve the french brand results.

PlWORLDOct.YTD%'13Pl
1Nissan5.27650.446201
2Mitsubishi2.99430.636123
3Tesla2.35224.02995
4Ford1.54919.29377
5Chevrolet 1.62718.99272
8BMW2.49114.298613
9BYD1.90513.425511
10Renault1.95713.00956





(1) - Includes Holden Volt, Opel and Vauxhall Ampera;

e) - Estimate


Questions for November

1 - Will Tesla or Kandi surprise? 

2 - Will the Outlander PHEV post a year best result?

3 - Can Chevrolet reach the #4 Ford?...

4 - ...And can Kandi reach Toyota in the manufacturers ranking?

10 comments:

  1. Akiharu MuraseDecember 01, 2014

    Please update Finland October 2014.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello again! It's tiiiime!

    Summary:

    Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

    I knew this day will come!!

    Guess who made over 1% in total sales. Well, if I was truthful, it wouldn't be a true victory. Remember how October had around 2000 sales? Well, November had 782. 5 EVs were sold making 0.64% and 3 Plug-in Hybrid Electric (new name) were also sold, making an additional 0.38%. Together, 1.02%. That figure which I hope I can say would be one of the first results of its kind where plug-ins outsold hybrids! Of which 5 were sold, making 0.9% !!!! Christmas really is here!

    So...

    4 Nissan LEAFs (0.51% of market)
    1 Renault Zoe
    1 BMW i8 (there's supposedly 16 awaiting order in 2015)
    2 Audi A3 e-trons

    Surprisingly, there were no Outlander PHEVs, but it's nice to see that the Germans are picking up the slack and that there is another i8 runnning around. I actually saw the only one, in blue last month, and it's near my area! Maybe I'll see the silver one too. What make it more interesting is that I have yet to see the more numerous i3.

    http://www.beepbeep.ie/stats/?sYear%5B%5D=2014&sYear%5B%5D=&sRegType=1&sMonth%5B%5D=11&sMonth%5B%5D=11&x=36&y=14

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Woops. I may have jumped the lines while reading off them. The plug-in figures are correct, but 7 hybrids were sold making 0.9%.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for the input on Ireland, i think the 1% barrier will be broken next year there, it is definitely one of the markets i'm anticipating most in January.

      Delete
    3. Good, I can't wait to see what you'll write up.

      I'm having mixed feelings on that though. There's a lot of sales in January. It really depends if the dealers stock up on enough plug-ins and if they advertise them enough. After all, for Nissan, the Pulsar is already its strongest seller, that might eat in to LEAF sales or dealers would be worried the LEAF may cannibalise on Pulsar sales. Usually, it's January that determines what percentage of sales plug-ins will have.

      Anyway, we still have december which would have less than half the sales last month. It's would be very impressive by how insensitive plug-in sales are compare to the whole market, but it would be a hollow victory again.

      Delete
  3. Jose, I appreciate your efforts to track EV market with this blog, but I think your Kandi numbers may be off by quite a bit.

    KNDI is a public company. We know from their Q3 earnings report and 10Q filing from 11/10/2014 that they actually sold 1,950 units for Q3. For comparison, we see that the company sold over 4,000 units in Q2 so your June YTD estimate of 5,329 published mid July looks consistent with the company's Q2 reports.

    From simple addition of your June YTD est of 5,329 + 1,950 reported by Kandi for Q3 + your est. of 1,700 for October, one concludes that Kandi's YTD sales are closer to 9,000 units vs the 17,535 that you are showing for Kandi YTD. This changes the company's position in the WW rankings quite a bit and may even move them off your top 10.

    Any thoughts?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A pertinent question.

      I have two Big Question Marks regarding current plug-in sales, one regards Tesla and the whereabouts of all those cars made to justify the financial results of the last 3Q, and the other is Kandi.

      There are reports of several thousand cars produced per month, and the company itself made estimates of making Kandies(?!?) in the Tens of Thousands this year, yet they reveal low sales numbers...

      Where are those manufactured cars going? Are they only counting as "sales", cars sold to private consumers and companies? Are those not counted as sales going to the car-sharing vending machines?

      A question mark i didn't see answered anywhere.

      Delete
    2. Kandi's sales to the share services and vending machines are definitely counted. Kandi has actually said that 100% of their sales so far are to the ZZY car shares. (The car share and vending machine companies which buy all of Kandi's output to date are each named ___ Zou Zhong You Electric Vehicle Service Co, with a variation for each city name. "ZZY" for short.) Kandi also owns a 9.5% economic stake in each of the ZZY car rental companies. Perhaps Kandi will eventually sell directly to consumers or fleets, but to date this has not happened yet.

      At Kandi's shareholder meeting in San Francisco last month, Kandi's Chairman actually said the company's current maximum manufacturing rate is 2,000 units per month, which is another datapoint suggesting that your 17,535 YTD estimate has to be off.

      I think the true number for Kandi unit sales is closer to 9,000 YTD at best through end of October. That's still a lot of units, but not nearly as strong as your table indicates. And based on those numbers Kandi is not #1 in China and not among the top 10 worldwide EV manufacturers either.

      Delete
    3. So, if you are right, this article from Seeking Alpha (http://seekingalpha.com/author/michael-nguyen/instablog) is wrong.

      I will check this further and in the next China i hope to have more detailed data on this.

      Delete
    4. Michael Nguyen was way off in his forecasts for Kandi as published October 12 on SeekingAlpha. Michael predicted 6,771 units for the month of Sept and 10,506 for Q3 in that article.

      Kandi is a US-listed public company (ticker KNDI) and they have to report and file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission periodically. You can look up Kandi's 10-Q form and Q3 earnings report filed on November 10. Its very clear that Kandi says they actually shipped only 1,950 units for the entire quarter.

      Kandi shipments declined from over 4,000 in Q2 to under 2,000 in Q3. This is a steep decline and NOT gaining ground on Toyota or any other EV manufacturer in the worldwide rankings. Check out the primary data for yourself.

      Delete