Models: Renault Zoe shines in disrupting market
Registrations were down 7% YoY in January, to over 150,000 units, marking the 7th straight monthly drop in a row, with Europe's three-digit growth failing to completely replace the Chinese fall into the abyss (-50% YoY).
Last month, BEVs dropped 23% YoY, while PHEVs grew 37%, their biggest growth rate since November 2018, allowing them to recover from 26% of sales last year, to the current 31%, while the Global PEV share already hit 2% last month.
Last month, BEVs dropped 23% YoY, while PHEVs grew 37%, their biggest growth rate since November 2018, allowing them to recover from 26% of sales last year, to the current 31%, while the Global PEV share already hit 2% last month.
Despite this start of the year in the red, and the current Corona Vírus crisis, the second half of the year should see the return to growth, even if the growth rates could be limited to low tens.
With the current disruption in China, as 9 of the models in January's Top 20 weren't there one month ago, and two of them had their first full sales month in January!
Excepting the fleet-friendly #18 FAW Besturn B30 EV and the export-friendly #15, SAIC MG ZS EV, all the other additions to the Top 20 came from Legacy OEMs, with the most spectacular additions being the Peugeot's 208 EV and 3008 PHEV, that right in their first full sales month, jumped to #7 and #16, respectively, but the nost unexpected model to joind the table was the Chevrolet Bolt(!), that had a surprising sales uptick in the USA, allowing it to return to the table, after and absence of well over a year.
Excepting the fleet-friendly #18 FAW Besturn B30 EV and the export-friendly #15, SAIC MG ZS EV, all the other additions to the Top 20 came from Legacy OEMs, with the most spectacular additions being the Peugeot's 208 EV and 3008 PHEV, that right in their first full sales month, jumped to #7 and #16, respectively, but the nost unexpected model to joind the table was the Chevrolet Bolt(!), that had a surprising sales uptick in the USA, allowing it to return to the table, after and absence of well over a year.
It is still too early to know if this a freak event, or not, but despite all these changes, the Top Dog remained the same, with the Tesla Model 3 winning its 12th consecutive monthly win, thanks to to 10.013 units, a 37% growth rate, a slower growth rate that proves the Tesla midsizer is maturing and coming closer to its full potential.
Bit not all is good news for the Californian maker, because while the Big Tesla's being left out of the Top 20 in January isn't much of a news (same thing happened a year ago, and in the end of the year, both were in the Top 20), but comparing last month deliveries with January '19, the Model X was down 19%, while the Model S fared even worse, at -32%...Worse still, counting both together, it was the 12th straight month of falling sales. That refresh is sorely needed, Tesla...
Bit not all is good news for the Californian maker, because while the Big Tesla's being left out of the Top 20 in January isn't much of a news (same thing happened a year ago, and in the end of the year, both were in the Top 20), but comparing last month deliveries with January '19, the Model X was down 19%, while the Model S fared even worse, at -32%...Worse still, counting both together, it was the 12th straight month of falling sales. That refresh is sorely needed, Tesla...
Elsewhere, the Renault Zoe had its best month (by far) in January, edging close to 10.000 registrations and giving the Tesla Model 3 some proper fight, something that the Tesla midsizer hadn't experienced in a year...
The Volkswagen Group also had reasons to smile about, with the VW Passat PHEV jumping to #5, and the VW e-Golf reaching #8 (thanks to generous discounts), while the Audi e-Tron was #10, making 3 models of the German conglomerate in the Top 10.
A mention to the Volvo XC60 PHEV, in #17, confirming the success of this midzise SUV, while the BMW i3 fell 10 spots, to #20, having seen its sales drop by 29% YoY. Is the quirky hatchback losing its appeal?
Finally, the #21 BMW X5 PHEV is getting ready to join the Top 20, having registered a record 2.044 registrations, apparently confirming also the success of the formula "> battery = > sales" in the PHEV field. Now, if they only gave it fast-charging abilities...
Manufacturers: BMW wins January
January saw BMW win the monthly Manufacturers title, thanks to some 13.000 units (+128% YoY), as the automaker is pushing production of its PHEVs, milking everything it can from them.
Tesla was pushed to the Second Spot, but not by much (197 units), and should resume the leadership next month, but the most striking aspect of last month Manufacturers table is the fall from grace of the Chinese makers, the highest placed, BYD, was just #6, while several Legacy OEMs had startup-like growth rates and are among the Best Sellers, not only BMW grew at a three-digit growth rate, but the #4 Volkswagen (+107%) also did it and Renault (+144%) scored its 2nd record result in a row, crossing for the first time the 10.000 units mark, with the French car maker ending the month on the podium.
But this is nothing compared with Peugeot, that just in the month of January, registered more plugin units than in the full two previous years...
Coming down in the table, #9 Volvo is also at full charge, scoring its second record performance in a row, thanks to 5.937 units, while Audi and Porsche(!) joined the Top 20, with the first in #10 and the second in #18, making three brands of the Volkswagen Group in the Top 20.
In fact, looking at registrations by Automotive Group, the German juggernaut was #1, with over 21.000 units. Not bad for what is only the first month of their Year Zero, in the Group's Plan to Rule the EV World...
Interestingly, a year ago, the Best Selling Legacy OEM was Nissan, while now it is only the 9th Best Selling Legacy Brand (and #12 in the table), having seen its sales drop by 32% YoY...It seems the train has left the station and Nissan is waving it goodbye, watching it go away, while sitting in the bench and thinking: "Mmmm...Maybe Carlos wasn't that bad, after all..."
In fact, looking at registrations by Automotive Group, the German juggernaut was #1, with over 21.000 units. Not bad for what is only the first month of their Year Zero, in the Group's Plan to Rule the EV World...
Interestingly, a year ago, the Best Selling Legacy OEM was Nissan, while now it is only the 9th Best Selling Legacy Brand (and #12 in the table), having seen its sales drop by 32% YoY...It seems the train has left the station and Nissan is waving it goodbye, watching it go away, while sitting in the bench and thinking: "Mmmm...Maybe Carlos wasn't that bad, after all..."
But the tumble of the month went for BAIC, that dropped from #3 last year, to #19, with only 2.451 deliveries.
But for every drop, there is a climb, and two manufacturers profiting from the Chinese OEM drops were Mercedes, jumping to #15, and Chevrolet, in #16.
January is a traditional weak month in China, if I remember your previous China January article correctly. I think 2019 in China was atypical.
ReplyDeleteBut why does EV-sales fall harder than ICE sales?
Was the market that dependent on subsidies to close the price-gap with ICE cars?
Or are there some new, far more attractive models waiting behind the curtains?
@José you should know better than to compare Tesla numbers in the first month... Aside from the still small Chinese production, all that these low numbers tell us, is that Tesla has more successfully cleared inventory at the end of the year this time around. We won't really know anything more before the end of the current quarter.
ReplyDeleteAs always, the full story will only be available at the end of the quarter.
DeleteStill, i think it is safe to say that the Model 3 is getting close to its demand limits, and Tesla will need the Model Y to continue growing at 50%-plus growth rates.
I totally agree that they need to introduce additional models to keep up exponential growth. (At least until robo-taxis completely change the game... Hard to say what happens at that point.) My point was just that we can't really deduce this from January deliveries.
DeleteAs for Model 3 getting close to demand limits, that's actually a good question. On one hand, there are no major markets left for initial delivery peaks from pent-up demand. On the other hand, it looks like US sales are following the same pattern as previous models did: an initial burst from pent-up demand, followed by a significant pull-back, followed by more steady growth, up to an "organic" plateau that might very well be even above the early peak. (Though in the case of the Model 3, the initial peak was exacerbated by the incentives phase-out...) If other markets follow the same pattern, we might very well yet see some growth in world-wide sales. And of course there should be major additional tailwinds from local production in China now and in Europe later...
Note that Tesla is expected to see significant ongoing production cost savings, which they are likely at least partially to pass on to customers, unless and until they decide to introduce another, even more affordable entry model. Also, I don't expect them to stop introducing further improvements to this model for an extended period of time, like they did with Model S and X for a while...
Everything considered, I wouldn't be surprised to see Model 3 growing sales (albeit at a slower rate) for a long time to come.
From the beginning to the end of February, 2 ships came to Korea, 1 to Taiwan, 1 to China. 3 ships came to Europe by the end of February. this gives approximately 28,000 pieces of inventory in February, although part of European sales from them will be March.
Deleteat the end of February, 4 ships came to Europe and 1 to China - all of them will be the March inventory - this is another 20,000 pieces.
Carriers to Europe have seen a pretty steady average of ~3,500 Model 3 each (except for the very fist few ones), i.e. seven carriers in Q1 should correspond to some 25,000 deliveries. Deliveries in China and nearby markets on the other hand were much lower thus far than the number of carriers would suggest -- so it's hard to draw any specific conclusions from the number of carriers going there this quarter...
DeleteCongratulations BMW for becoming #1, but most of their vehicles are plugins with 30 - 50 km range, so Teslas vehicles with 400 - 600 km range will reduce pollution much more.
ReplyDeletePer marklines, Teslas estimated sales is 22,350, I wonder why its so low in this website. If they sold 10013 worldwide with 1517 in EU and 3183 in China; then they sold only 5313 units in USA even if we presume they sold 0 units in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the rest of the world. Sounds fishy.
https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/salesfig_usa_2020
2020-01 is a very sad month with coronavirus causing a havoc in china with its impact felt around the region and the world.
2020-02 is even worse as the whole month suffered. Whole Q1 is a disaster. Only good news is Tesla ramping up the production in its Giga-Shanghai. But the overall auto sales suffered even serious drop. Once the world puts down this disease, then the sales will surge.
Europe is the only green light here as the sales surged beyond our expectations.
Since Tesla's Fremont factory generally produces only for international markets at the beginning of the quarter, any North American sales in January are just from inventory that they didn't manage to sell/deliver before the end of the previous quarter. It seems that this inventory was particularly low this time around -- so the low US number is actually very plausible.
DeleteNote that US deliveries for Tesla are only an estimate, since Tesla doesn't publish official figures for that. Such estimates are often far off the mark.
(InsideEVs for example used to be very proud of their estimates generally being pretty close -- but after a bunch of rather bad calls last year, they threw in the towel...)
Events to watch in march.
ReplyDeleteTesla Model Y sales starts.
Tesla Model 3 sales should cross 500 000 mark. As of 2019-12-31, it was just below 450 000.
Tesla total sales should cross 1 000 000 mark. As of 2019-12-31, it was just above 900 000.
VW said that they will start selling ID.3 in 2020-summer.
ReplyDeleteIf its late Jun 4th week, then its 4 months from now.
If its late Sep 3rd week, then its 7 months from now.
ID.3 is a very important vehicle as its a functional hatch that can seat 5 and has decent range and very affordable.
Lets keep counting the months for now.
For those wondering the sources of power generation in china, here is the detail for 2019. Share of coal has gone down from 80% in earlier years to 72% last year and will continue to decrease as alternatives share increase.
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinas-nuclear-generating-capacity-continued-to-gr
China power gen
coal: 72.3%
nuc: 4.88 %
hydro: 16.1%
wind: 5.0%
solar: 1.6%
total: 99.88%
Note that hydro, which makes up the majority of non-coal power, is pretty intermittent -- if it's down due to less rainy weather, that could very well outweigh increases in other alternative sources... Looking at these numbers, it will still be years until we see significant sustained reductions in coal generation :-(
DeleteJose,
ReplyDeleteThe Kia Niro EV is probably the only long range EV model (with a price tag of less than €50,000.-) that is not in the top 20.
By the way, please check and change the photo in your January China post. That photo is very looooooooong (vertically).
Cheers
Position #2 car from 2019 is missing from the list. Was it Chinese?
ReplyDeleteYes: BAIC EU-Series. See http://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2020/01/global-top-20-december-2019.html
DeleteI read somewhere that they are introducing a new generation of the EU -- I'd guess that's why sales were so low in January...
DeleteFor February, Tesla has sold less than 100 units in Norway.
ReplyDeleteAudi E-Tron came out on top for second time in a row with 1138.
I wonder why Tesla hasn't yet started Q1 deliveries in Norway, while they are already well underway in several other European markets...
Delete(And just to be clear: it's *not* a demand problem. New orders placed now won't be delivered before Q2.)
Whether or not it's a demand problem remains to be seen.
DeleteActually the deliveries have started to trickle in in the last days of February. https://teslastats.no/
DeleteSeeing the first February Model 3 results, they are very different from country to country, which could mean that in some countries the demand limits are being reached, while in others, they are still to be found.
DeleteAnd of course, expect the usual high tide in March, with a big result to be uncovered by then…
(Spoiler alert: It's the UK.)
You read it first here, people… :-)
I'd say such inconsistent results are rather an indication that it's more of a logistics anomaly?...
Delete(Except for expected jumps in markets with significant incentive changes, of course.)
Is that a guess or ...?
DeleteMore of a logical conclusion than a guess. If sales were constrained by having reached a demand limit, we should expect to see fairly steady numbers -- not wild, seemingly random swings... Highly uneven swings between markets suggest uneven distribution.
Delete(The only other explanation I can think of would be significant incentive changes -- but I'm not aware of any outside the Netherlands and the UK...)
Grand Mark ship 3 days could not enter the Zeebrugge.Scandinavian shipments delayed.
DeleteArrived February 22,stood up for unloading on 25.
DeleteThe 3 days of sales in Norway are not impressive.Strange(maybe only expensive versions are delivered?)
Delete@antrik
Delete(And just to be clear: it's *not* a demand problem. New orders placed now won't be delivered before Q2.)
This does not apply to all countries.Including Norway.
6 Vehicles Carrier arrived in Norway(2 big) in the last 5 days.It ill be very hot.I hope the sales BEV will not be much less than in March 2019.
DeleteUK priority for Tesla in March.2nd destination-Sauthampton.
DeleteModel 3 order page for Norway shows delivery of new orders in Q2. I checked.
Delete@Valid Would you mind sharing with us how to get the data about the carriers? Thanks.
Deletehttp://bit.ly/TeslaCarriers
DeleteRegarding the Tesla Model S/X sales YoY comparison, I believe the cheaper 75D/SR variants were still on sale in January last year, so not exactly apples to apples comparison.
ReplyDeleteGood point -- though I still think that fluctuations in Tesla's January deliveries are more a function of logistics than anything else...
DeleteI still think the removal of the 75D version from the Model S/X to be one of the stupidest decisions by the product planners at Tesla.
DeleteAudi must have made plenty of hi5's after knowing that…
(Great! More free space for the e-Tron 50!")
Considering that the 100 kWh one is now only some $5,000 more expensive than the 75 kWh was before the change, I very much doubt this resulted in significant defections to other brands...
DeleteIf there was no defections to other brends where did the sales go?
DeleteThere are surely some defections -- just not many specifically because of the discontinuing of the 75 kWh models I believe...
DeleteHowever, there are other factors affecting sales of these models: including in-house competition (from Model 3 and upcoming Y), as well as Osborne effect due to widely stipulated (and partially confirmed) upcoming updates to S and X.
@Jose Pontes: Hello Jose, Time for Flash News - February. It was a really good summary. You could even develop it as a table (maybe share on Google Drive with some more enthusiasts to fill in data).
ReplyDeleteI am planning for a some changes in a few months, so that can be a possibility.
DeleteGood news.
Delete2019 Jan global no. was 153,695. So that's a (150613/153695) - 1 = -2% change YoY right?
ReplyDelete