World Top 20 December 2015 Special Edition (Updated)

Tesla Model X: The Supermodel fat sister?

Models - Tesla Model S #1!

Thanks to another outstanding performance of the chinese and european market, an historic monthly record was set, with more than 86.000 plug-ins sold last month, which not only represents the fourth consecutive record month, but also a 51% increase over November, and a significant 134%(!) increase regarding the same month last year, pulling the YTD sales to 548k units.

The Tesla Model S was once again the Star of the Month, delivering 8.092 units (Best performance ever for a single model), allowing it be once again the Best Seller of the Month (For the fourth time this year), winning for the first time the Best Seller Model trophy, a first for Tesla.

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV also had an outstanding month, beating its December '13 record by a significant margin (7.058 vs 6.491), almost reaching the #2 Nissan Leaf.

Looking elsewhere (China), besides the established #4 BYD Qin, the Kandi Panda EV cemented its Sixth Spot (Up 20 positions YoY), while the BYD Tang (5.503 units, #3 in December) joined the Top 10 at #8, winning the 2015 Rookie Of The Year award and looking poised to be a strong contender for the Best Seller status in 2016.

As this is a Full Year special edition, we dig a little deeper, into the Top 20, where we can see six more chinese models (#11 BAIC E-Series, #12 Zotye Cloud EV, #15 Roewe 550 PHEV, #16 JAC i EV, #19 Kandi K10 EV and #20 Chery eQ), making it nine models coming from China in the Top 20, when last year there were six.

Good year also for EV's coming from Germany, with all of them improving their positions regarding last year, with special mention to the VW Golf GTE and Audi A3 e-Tron, both up 23 positions to #10 and #14, respectively. 

On the other side, some models dropped significantly, if the Chevy Volt losing five positions to #9 (New Generation) or the Kandi K10 EV losing nine positions to #19 (Production priority for the K11), have justifiable reasons, the Ford Energi products drop in the ranking is hardly justifiable...

Looking at the BEV / PHEV breakdown, BEV's won the race with 60%, although losing 2% share regarding 2014.

Pl	WORLD	Dec.	YTD	%	'14Pl
1	Tesla Model S	8.082	50.366	9	3
2	Nissan Leaf	3.637	43.870	8	1
3	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	7.058	43.259	8	2
4 5 6 7	BYD Qin BMW i3 Kandi K11 Panda EV Renault Zoe	1.512 3.409 4.701 3.158	31.898 24.083 20.390 18.846	6 4 4 3	7 6 26 9
8 9 10	BYD Tang Chevrolet Volt (1) Volkswagen Golf GTE	5.503 2.398 3.191	18.375 17.508 17.282	3 3 3	N/A 4 33
11 12	BAIC E-Series EV Zotye Z100 / Cloud EV	1.696 2.582	16.488 15.467	3 3	16 N/A
13	Volkswagen e-Golf	1.286	15.356	3	21
14 15 16 17 18 19 20	Audi A3 e-Tron Roewe 550 PHEV JAC i EV Ford Fusion Energi Ford C-Max Energi Kandi K10 EV e) Kia Soul EV	1.578 1.611 1.581 1.067 1.127 1.000 1.225	11.962 10.711 10.420 9.894 9.643 7.665 7.510	2 2 2 2 2 1 1	37 34 35 9 11 10 27
	TOTAL	86.434	548.210

Manufacturers -  Nissan Falls to #4

This was the sixth seventh eighth consecutive month that BYD won the Best Selling Manufacturer title, every time with a record month (Now at 10.925 units), the chinese carmaker won its first Manufacturers title (A first for a chinese carmaker), although it failed to beat the 2014 full year sales record of Nissan (63.313 units). Better luck in 2016...

Nissan took a big tumble in the last month of the year, dropping two positions and ending the year in Fourth, with less than half of the Share won in the previous year (9% now vs 20% in '14), to the benefit of #2 Tesla and #3 Mitsubishi, both ending the year with record performances and the american brand back to the runner-up position for the first time since 2010, at the time it had delivered 704 Roadsters... 

In the lower end of the Top 10 manufacturers ranking, Kandi climbed one position, ending the year in #7, changing positions with Renault, with Ford resisting in #10 to the Chevrolet attempt to reach a Top 10 position.

As this is a Full Year edition, we dig a littler deeper, into the Top 20, where we see Chevrolet in an unusually low #11, and three newcomers, the #14 Audi, #15 SAIC Roewe and #16 Mercedes, accentuating the good performance of German and Chinese brands in 2015, with the share of the first country growing from 11% in 2014 to 20% now and the second from 17% to 32%.

Pl	WORLD	Dec.	YTD	%	'14Pl
1	BYD	10.925	61.726	11	7
2	Tesla	8.275	50.574	9	3
3	Mitsubishi	7.498	48.204	9	2
4	Nissan	3.960	47.671	9	1
5 6 7	Volkswagen BMW Kandi e)	7.024 6.029 6.201	40.148 33.412 28.055	8 6 5	11 9 10
8	Renault	4.234	27.282	5	8
9	Zotye	4.297	24.516	4	13
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20	Ford Chevrolet BAIC Chery Audi SAIC Roewe Mercedes JAC Volvo Kia Porsche	2.294 2.551 1.747 2.792 1.596 1.730 2.133 1.581 3.902 1.341 687	21.326 20.233 17.040 14.162 12.123 11.123 10.870 10.420 10.161 7.626 6.532	4 4 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1	5 4 15 12 25 22 24 23 16 20 17

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

e) Estimate

Class Best Sellers

Looking at the EV Market with traditional segmentation, let's see who are the Best-Sellers in each Segment:

* Micro-Car - Kandi K10 EV (Once again);

* A-Segment - Kandi K11 Panda EV (Surprise Of The Year);

* B-Segment - BMW i3 (Once again beating the Renault Zoe);

* C-Segment - Nissan Leaf (Third consecutive trophy);

* D-Segment - Ford Fusion Energi (Winner for the last time?);

* E/F-Segment - Tesla Model S (As ever);

* SUV - Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (Third time in a row, will the BYD Tang allow a fourth time?);

* MPV - Ford C-Max Energi (As ever);

* Pick-Up - Mitsubishi Minicab Miev (As ever);

* Sports Car - BMW i8 (Winner for the second time, with no real competition in sight).