Japan October 2016

The looks of the 2nd Gen Prius PHEV are starting to grow on me...
In a Nerdy-Manga-style sort of way.

Numb Edition

The Japanese EV was down 37% YoY in October, with some 1.100 units, placing the YTD numbers at around 19.000 units, three thousand units down on last year count in the same period, with the EV Share down to 0,46%. With numbers below last year volumes, one has to go back five years to see such low numbers, which doesn't come as a surprise, considering how the two local heavy-weights are behaving.

The 30kWh-kick effect has waned and the Nissan Leaf, the main driving force of the market, responsible for 66% of all plug-ins registered this year, has seen its sales slow down significantly, if we compare this performance with October 2014, 2013 and 2012 (October 2015 was an uncharacteristic month because buyers were waiting for the 30 kWh version), all those months had four-digit numbers to present, while this year only 513 units were sold, meaning a sales drop of over 50%, so unless Nissan throws something new to the table (40kWh version...), sales will continue to drop and the upcoming Second Generation Toyota Prius PHEV will have the 2017 Best Seller trophy served on a silver platter.

To worsen the numb feeling on the Japanese EV market, the emissions scandal is continuing to hurt Mitsubishi and its Outlander PHEV sales, with registrations down 59%(!) to 486 units in October, while YTD sales are down 52%(!), this being by far the worst selling year of the Japanese plug-in SUV in its home ground.

In short, while in a normal year the front two would be selling over 1.000 units each in October, this year they can't even reach that number together!

The remaining models in the ranking have comparatively small numbers, with the front two models gobbling 88% of the market, but not all is lost, the Prius Prime is expected to arrive soon and if Toyota managed to win the 2012 Best Seller title with a "light range" (Putting it in mild terms) Prius PHEV, then this decent-range, competitively priced second generation should improve significantly on the result achieved that year (12.300 units), which given the current state of affairs, should be more than enough to beat the current front runners and spike sales of this dormant market.

Pl	Japan	October	2016	%	Pl '15
1	Nissan Leaf	513	12.645	66	2
2	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	486	4.648	24	1
3	Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia e)	50	832	4	7
4	BMW i3 e)	45	195	1	4
5	Toyota Prius Plug-In		183	1	3
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 12	Mitsubishi Minicab Miev Tesla Model S e) Mitsubishi I-Miev Mit. Minicab Miev Truck BMW i8 e) Smart Fortwo ED BMW 330e e) Audi A3 e-Tron e)	2 20 11 8	179 173 149 62 25 22 5 5	1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0	5 6 8 9 10 N/A N/A N/A
	TOTAL	1.135	19.123	100

e) Estimate