Iceland August 2017

Another Record Month in High Flying Iceland

With the market growing four-fold in August and this year market share at a record 10%, the Icelandic plug-in market is now sailing through the mainstream market, with this year sales growing 225%(!) YoY to 1.843 units, after another record month (Fourth in a row!) in August, with 409 registrations.

With the 2017 EV market now above 10% share, it reached for the first time the two digits, being only the second market to do so, after Norway. At this pace, i wouldn't be surprised if the market share reached some 13% by year end.  

At such high market share, this "Second Norway" has plug-ins becoming an important part of the brands sales, as is the case of Mitsubishi (82% of the brand sales), Porsche (71%), Audi (62%) or BMW (59%).

Looking at the models ranking, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is back at the leadership, having registered 152 units last month, a new all-time record for a single model in this market, followed by the Nissan Leaf and Volvo XC90 PHEV (Both with new pb), while the Audi A3 e-Tron climbed to #4, improving substancially on his 2016 standing (#11, with 38 units delivered throughout the whole year).

The Rookie of the Year Renault Zoe continues to impress, standing in #7 and Best Seller of its class (B-Segment/Subcompact), while the BMW 225xe Active Tourer is also improving on its last year performance (#10 now vs #15 then).

In the brands ranking, Mitsubishi (27%) is in the leadership, followed by the #2 Nissan (22%) and #3 Volvo (10%), but with Volkswagen (9%) and BMW (8%) on the lookout for a podium seat.

Pl	Iceland	Aug.	YTD	%	'16Pl
1 2 3 4	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Nissan Leaf Volvo XC90 T8 Audi A3 e-Tron	152 61 38 18	500 369 152 72	27 20 8 4	1 2 5 11
5	Volkswagen Passat GTE	7	65	4	4
6 7 8 9 10 10 12 13 14 15	Volkswagen Golf GTE Renault Zoe Audi Q7 e-Tron Volkswagen e-Golf Mercedes GLC350e BMW 225xe Active Tourer BMW i3 Porsche Cayenne Plug-In Mercedes GLE500e Kia Optima PHEV	12 7 7 11 3 7 10 3 10 12	60 58 46 42 41 41 39 36 35 32	3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2	3 N/A 10 5 12 15 14 12 9 N/A
15 17 17 17	BMW X5 40e Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia BMW 330e Volvo V60 Plug-In	10 6 5 5	32 30 30 30	2 2 2 2	14 13 N/A N/A
20	Kia Soul EV	4	27	1	11
21 22	Mercedes C350e Mercedes B250e	4 4	21 17	1 1	22 24
22 24 25	Hyundai Ioniq Electric Porsche Panamera PHEV Volkswagen e-Up! Others	2 2 1 8	17 11 9 31	1 1 0 2	N/A N/A 18
	TOTAL	409	1.843	100

Regular Hybrids + Plug-ins Ranking

Pl	Model	Aug. Sales
1	Mitsu. Outlander PHEV	152
2	Nissan Leaf	61
3	Toyota Yaris Hybrid	48
4	Volvo XC90 PHEV	38
5	Toyota Auris Hybrid	29

In a market that reached 13% share in August, plug-ins are becoming more and more common among the overall best sellers, despite not having access to the models ranking, like in Norway, the data available allows me to say that in August, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV was the Best Selling Model in Iceland, being possibly the first time a plug-in reached the highest place in the general ranking. And that's not all, the 61 Leaf's were possibly enough for the Japanese hatchback to be Third last month, between the Nissan Qashqai and Kia Sorento ICE models, thus becoming the best selling car that month. 

If we add regular hybrids to plug-ins sales, the high share of these last ones is noticeable, as regular hybrids, are taking a beating, with only two representatives, against three from plug-ins.

In fact, looking at the Top 5 best sellers, we see representatives of each technology, with two PHEVs (#1 Outlander PHEV and #4 Volvo XC90 PHEV), one BEV (#2 Nissan Leaf) and two HEVs (#3 Yaris Hybrid & #5 Auris Hybrid), as plug-ins continue to increase share, expect at some point in the future this Top 5 to be 100% PEV.