Sweden May 2016

Sweden's got a new plug-in favorite

The Winner Takes It All... Edition

The Swedish EV market is officially on fire, with 1.211 units in April, up 67% YoY, making this the third consecutive month above the 1.000 units, a new record, with YTD sales up 72%, we are headed for some 16.000 units by year end, significantly above my prediction in the beggining of this year. How i love to be wrong this way...

As result of these brilliant performance, the EV Share surpassed for the first time the 3% barrier to  3.08%, an all-time record in the Swedish EV market.

Looking at the monthly models ranking, the VW Passat GTE, ensured its second third fourth leadership score, with 365 units (Again new Personal Best), giving no chance for the remaining competition and providing a whole new meaning to the old ABBA song portraited in this months title.

Now that we are on the ABBA songs subject, another theme from the band has occurred to me, looking at May's Second Placed Outlander PHEV, the "The King Has Lost His Crown" song illustrates accurately its performance, after a rough time in the beggining of the year, the japanese SUV, winner of the 2014 & 2015 Best Seller titles, is returning to its old form, but the 200-ish results that granted it supremacy in the past is no longer enough to steal the leadership from the VW Passat GTE...Will there be a clash of Titans?

Volvo had again a good sales month, placing the V60 Plug-in wagon in Third (157 units, best result in three years!) and the XC90 PHEV SUV in Fourth, with a personal best 101 units.

A telling tale of the current trend towards PHEV's, is the fact that the four best selling models are plug-in hybrids, something also visible in the BEV / PHEV breakdown, where 100% electric vehicles are down to 31% share versus 40% last year.

Pl	Model	Sales
1	Volkswagen Passat GTE	365
2	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	167
3	Volvo V60 Plug-In	157
4	Volvo XC90 T8	101
5	Nissan Leaf	77

Looking at the YTD ranking, there were a number of changes:

- The Volvo V60 Plug-In climbed to the runner-up position, its highest standing since January;

- Last Year Best Seller, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, continued to recover, climbing one position to #4;

- The VW Golf GTE went back to #8, while the BMW X5 PHEV went up one position to #11;

- The current PHEV SUV trend has a new player, with the Mercedes GLC350e registering its first two units, hopefully it will sell a lot more than its larger sibling GLE500e, but with that model languishing in #24 with 8 units, that's not saying much...

2On the manufacturers ranking, Volkswagen (32, up 1%) is firm in the leadership, followed by Volvo (19%, up 1%) and BMW (13%, down 1%) in Third.

Final mention to the two registrations of the Hyundai ix35 FCEV, increasing the 2016 tally to 5 units. As for the Toyota Mirai, Swedes are still safe from crossing with the Terminator...

Pl	Sweden	May	YTD '16	%	'15Pl
1 2	Volkswagen Passat GTE Volvo V60 Plug-In	365 157	1.170 479	25 10	11 4
3	Nissan Leaf	77	440	9	3
4 5	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Volvo XC90 T8	167 101	425 386	9 8	1 12
6	Tesla Model S	24	274	6	2
7 8	BMW i3 * Volkswagen Golf GTE	26 49	244 202	5 4	7 5
9 10 11	Renault Zoe BMW 330e BMW X5 40e	31 50 20	194 168 100	4 4 2	6 N/A 16
12 13	Audi A3 e-Tron BMW 225xe Active Tourer	12 16	95 83	2 2	8 N/A
14	Volkswagen e-Up!	24	71	2	13
15	Renault Kangoo ZE	6	60	1	14
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 27 27 27	Volkswagen e-Golf Mercedes C350e Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia ** Peugeot Partner EV Toyota Prius Plug-In Kia Soul EV Porsche Cayenne Plug-In BMW i8 Mercedes GLE500e Mercedes B250e Renault Twizy Mercedes GLC350e Saab 9.3 NEVS Mitsubishi I-Miev Mercedes S500e Volkswagen XL1	13 11 9 12 13 3 12 7 1 2 2	58 48 41 28 23 13 12 11 8 7 5 2 2 2 2 2	1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0	10 17 9 24 15 19 N/A 20 27 21 18 N/A N/A N/A 24 N/A
	TOTAL	1.211	4.657	100

* - 21 Rex + 5 Bev

** - 6 Pass + 3 LCV

Plug-Ins Versus Regular Hybrids

Pl	Model	April
1	Toyota Auris Hybrid	470
2	Volkswagen Passat GTE	365
3	Toyota Yaris Hybrid	199
4	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	167
4	Volvo V60 Plug-In	157

If we combine May sales of regular hybrids with plug-ins, we see that the Toyota hybrids are becoming increasingly attainable by Plug-ins, if the Auris Hybrid still leads the way, the VW Passat GTE is closing in and looks to reach it soon, while the #3 Yaris Hybrid is looking also perfectly reachable by other Plug-ins in a couple of months.

Source: bilsweden.se