Germany July 2016

  

German Incentives, Month 1 - French brands say: "Merci!"

After completing the first full month after the incentives start, one would expect a sudden rise in registrations, but somehow unexpectedly, sales were down 11% YoY to 1.807 units, although being the best result in the last four months, we expected a more.

With this result, the EV Share remained stable at 0.62%, below the 0.75% registered last year.

Despite this, looking at the July models ranking, there were models experiencing an uptick in sales, although some of them are not connected to the incentives scheme, like the 129 units of the Audi Q7 e-Tron, making this the first real sales month for the Big-Audi-wagon-on-stilts.

The BMW i3 is preparing itself for the predictable sales surge of the upcoming months, reaching Third last month, while the VW e-Golf might have been the only domestic model to take full profit of the incentives, surging to Second Place in July, with 136 units, its best performance in a year, outselling for the second consecutive its PHEV sibling, the Golf GTE.

But the-Golf sales surge was not enough to remove the Renault Zoe from the First Place in July, Renault's hatch did a year best performance, with 301 units, winning its Third Best Seller of the Month trophy this year, but the good performances coming from French models didn't stopped there, as the Citröen C-Zero (15 units) and Peugeot iOn (16 units), did their best performances in over three years(!), the twin models managed to sell more in one month than in the whole year of 2015, it seems the PSA Group took the incentives scheme as a life saver to prolong the career of these two veterans.

Pl	Model	Sales
1	Renault Zoe	301
2	Volkswagen e-Golf	136
3	BMW i3	134
4	Audi Q7 e-Tron	129
5	VW Passat GTE	109

The YTD German EV ranking had a more quiet month, but still there were plenty of changes to talk about:

- The VW e-Golf jumped three positions to #9, now looking to reach the #7 Nissan Leaf arch rival;

- The Audi Q7 e-Tron jumped to #13, and is now trying to beat the Volvo and Mitsubishi for the Best Selling SUV title;

- The BMW 330e, rose one position to #17 and 220 units;

- The Volvo V60 Plug-In was another benefited with the incentives, selling 59 units, its best performance this year, climbing two positions to #24. 

Looking at the manufacturers ranking, Volkswagen continues firm in the Top Spot, with 19% share, followed by BMW (16%) and Renault (16%), with Audi (10%) in Fourth.

Pl	Germany	July	YTD	%	'15 Pl
1 2	Renault Zoe BMW i3 *	301 134	1.580 957	13 8	6 2
3	Audi A3 e-Tron	71	867	7	5
4 5	Tesla Model S Volkswagen Golf GTE	80 93	838 813	7 7	7 4
6	Volkswagen Passat GTE	109	766	6	9
7	Nissan Leaf	42	689	6	10
8	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	87	643	5	3
9 10	Volkswagen e-Golf Volvo XC90 T8	136 51	494 454	4 4	8 28
11 12	BMW 225xe Active Tourer Mercedes C350e   e)	65 40	441 434	4 3	20 13
13	Audi Q7 e-Tron	129	403	3	24
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 29 30 30 32 33 34 35	Renault Twizy   Kia Soul EV Volkswagen e-Up! BMW 330e Mercedes B250e BMW X5 40e Porsche Cayenne Plug-In Mercedes GLE500e BMW i8 Mercedes S500e   e) Volvo V60 Plug-In Porsche Panamera Plug-In Renault Kangoo ZE e) Smart Fortwo ED Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia Mercedes GLC350e Citroen C-Zero Peugeot iOn Citroen Berlingo EV e) BMW 740e Tesla Model X Toyota Prius Plug-In Others	50 46 37 28 22 18 24 14 23 15 59 7 10 3 9 25 15 16 5 33 9 1	349 338 303 220 219 200 190 181 167 142 124 90 85 67 67 57 55 55 35 34 29 22 60	3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0  0 0	15 1 12 32 14 22 17 29 16 19 18 23 N/A 11 25 N/A 36 36 33 N/A N/A 26
	TOTAL	1.807	12.489	100

* - 62 Bev + 72 Rex

e) Estimate

Source: kba.de

Tesla Model S vs The Others (*)

Pl	Model	YTD 2016
1	Audi A7	2.206
2	Mercedes CLS	2.047
3	BMW 6-Series	990
4	Tesla Model S	838
5	Porsche Panamera	564

As expected, if the Audi A7 and Mercedes CLS remain out of reach, the Tesla Model S remains close to the BMW 6-Series, all while the Panamera waits for a new generation to get back into the game.

(*) - Considering that the German market is one of the hardest for Tesla to crack, the models we are comparing are not the volume sellers like the Audi A6 or BMW 5-Series, but those that are closer in concept and price to the Californian Sports Sedan.