Automotive
Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV: Paving New Roads For Plug-ins
After the half-hearted sales performances of the Miev family, Mitsu had high hopes for the PHEV version of their Outlander SUV.
After a troubled start, the Outlander PHEV started to be delivered in Europe last October with a waiting list of several thousands, ending the year in #3 YTD and winning the Best-Seller title in the last two months of the year.
In Japan it stayed behind the Leaf in YTD sales, but won four monthly Best Selling titles, not bad considering it only had seven complete sales months.
But the real race for stardom started this year, while having battery production constraints, (That's why the US market is still to conquer), it is currently the Best Selling Plug-In Hybrid in the world and it's only behind the Nissan Leaf in the global EV ranking, and remember, all this while being absent from the largest EV market (USA).
While still behind the Leaf in its home market, the Mitsu SUV is beating all sales records in Europe, with some 11.000 sales this year and several #1's across the world: Best Selling EV in Holland, Sweden, Finland and New Zealand and Best Selling PHEV in: Japan, Norway, UK, Spain and Ireland, all this while pushing EV and PHEV sales to unheard levels in many of those countries.
A remarkable performance for a pretty unremarkable SUV in ICE form...
Trends in the G8
We welcome the UK market in this club, as it has become the eighth market above 1.000/ units/month, joining the other 7 (USA, China, Japan, Netherlands, France, Norway and Germany) which, coincidentally, all were above 1.000 units in July, a remarkable performance by all of them.
(Ok, ok, the US is already in the 5-digit area, but it still counts, right?)
Besides the hyper-growing China (0,22% EV share, almost three times more than the 0,08% of last year), there are also other markets growing significantly, besides the special case of Norway (14% share vs 6% last year), in Germany, plug-ins finally started to gain traction (0,38% vs 0,23% in 2013) while the British EV market jumped from 0,16% last year to the current 0,33%, with even more growth in perspective, thanks to the recent landing of Tesla and the Outlander PHEV.
But there are still dark spots, France is still in the red, the EV Share is recovering (0,71%) but it is still below the 0,80% of last year. Also of importance, the French EV market (8.000 units this year) is no more the largest in Europe, with Norway (12.000) and the Netherlands (10.500) now above it, and this last one also winning the title of Market With the Most EV's (40.000 vs 39.500 in France).
Other Markets
Spain had its best month of the year (168 units), so there is still hope for EV's there, while Ireland is continuing to impress (0,21% EV share vs 0,08% last year) and Estonia is looking to recover the Little Norway nickname it had in 2012...For now the EV share there is at 1,15% and now it has to compete with Iceland (2% EV Share!) for that name.
Finland is also rising (0,34% vs 0,17% last year), but the real and unexpected news is the sudden sales jump in New Zealand, where the Outlander PHEV alone represents 0,18% of the global market, no mean feat if we remember that plug-ins last year represented just 0,007% of the market...Oh, and the total EV Share in NZ now stands at 0,22%
Questions for July
1 - Will the Outlander PHEV continue to impress and add more titles to its collection?
2 - Who will be #1 in Italy? And in Austria?
3 - Will e-Golf start to go beyond Norway in its quest for #1's?
