Norway December 2014

Automotive

Leaf Endures Edition

Another average sales month in Norway, with 1.545 EV's sold, giving credit to those who say the this market has plateaued, with only 7 units above the same month last year, while December marked the fourth consecutive month that sales ended in 1.500-something, which raises the question: "Will it continue this way this year?" - Let's hope it isn't so.

Anyways, the EV Share ended at 13,92%, a fantastic improvement over 2013 (6%), but with sales flattening, don't expect another spectacular improvement on EV Share this year, with the 20% goal i hear, looking a bit too ambitious.
  

Looking at December sales, the Leaf (353 units) seems to have found the antidote for the e-Golf (263) and it's now outrunning it with some ease, but there's a new (old) threat coming its way, Tesla is back on the game (266 sales, best since June), and just in time for winter to give Nissan's hatch a hard fight with its new AWD versions. 

Looking elsewhere in the monthly ranking, we have Kia's first Top 5 appearance, #5 with 122 units outrunning for the first time the BMW i3 in the compact crossover-thingy race.

Pl	Model	Sales
1	Nissan Leaf	353
2	Tesla Model S	266
3	Volkswagen e-Golf	263
4	Volkswagen e-Up!	187
5	Kia Soul EV	122

In the YTD ranking, the Fourth Place went for the BMW i3 (119 units, worst performance since January) by only 22 units, with the VW e-Golf almost outselling it in the last days.

Below the Top 6, the fight for #7 went for the Kia Soul EV jumping three positions, with the Renault Zoe also climbing one position to #8.

Two final mentions, the sudden sales burst of the Volvo V60 Plug-In (45 sales) and the solid landing of the Audi A3 e-Tron, 18 sales in the opening month for a PHEV here seems to indicate a promising career for the VAG product.

Let's look at the top individual performances:

#1 Nissan Leaf - Despite an early advantage from Tesla and the appearance of the Volkswagen e-Golf, the truth is that the Leaf resisted and arrived to December 31st as the Best Seller, even outselling its previous record of 4.604 units set the year before and reaching #3 in the General Ranking. It won't be easy to re-validate the title in 2015, but it wasn't also in 2014, so...

#2 Tesla Model S - In the first full year on the market, the Model S established itself as mainstream car (#5 in the General Ranking, best E-Segment car), despite his hefty price (Even Avis rents them!), with an earth-shattering record set in March (1.493 units!), the american car took the lead but then summer came and with it came a sales drought that unabled it to run along the Leaf's performance. 2015 will be also a strong year, thanks to the AWD versions, the question for the final quarter of the year will be if the Model X won't cannibalize it too much.

#3 Volkswagen e-Up! - In its first full year on the market, the VW city-car had a good performance, re-validating the EV A-Segment Best-Seller title, while securing an amazing 78% take on all Up! sales and winning the General A-Segment tile.

#4 BMW i3 - A globally positive first sales year for the german hot-hatch, #22 in the General Ranking, but sales have been softening lately, a mere glitch or is the most recent competition, both premium (A3 e-Tron, Merc B-Class) and others (Soul EV, Zoe), making a dent on the Bimmer sales?

#5 Volkswagen e-Golf - A lot was expected from this model, but the electric version of the popular VW somehow had a disappointing performance, failing to overcome the Leaf as the default EV. Nevertheless, it had a 21% take on global Golf sales, something not too shabby, considering that the German hatch is the Global Best-Seller of this market;

#6 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV - Never before had a PHEV made such an impact in this market (Haven't i wrote this already?), the 1.512 units sold (And 8% Share) by the japanese SUV are a far departure from the 231 units and 3% achieved then by the 2013 PHEV Best-Seller, the Volvo V60 Plug-In, of course the more PHEV-friendy-incentives legislation approved this year helped, but this was the only to profit from it, the Second best-selling plug-in hybrid was again the V60 Plug-in, this time only #14 with 92 units...

Looking at the manufacturers ranking, Volkswagen made its first Manufacturers Best-Seller Title, with 25%, outselling in the final months the previous owner, Nissan (24% Share). In a balanced ranking, in Third we have Tesla, with 20%, which had its performance hampered by the summer-production constraints.

Pl	Norway	Dec.	YTD '14	%	'13Pl
1	Nissan Leaf	353	4.781	24	1
2	Tesla Model S	266	4.040	20	2
3	Volkswagen e-Up!	187	2.971	15	3
4	BMW i3	119	2.040	10	13
5	Volkswagen e-Golf	263	2.018	10	N/A
6	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	56	1.512	8	N/A
7	Kia Soul EV	122	370	2	N/A
8	Renault Zoe	79	441	2	N/A
9	Mitsubishi I-Miev	15	413	2	4
10 11	Citröen C-Zero Peugeot iOn	1 16	371 309	2 2	9 10
12	Peugeot Partner EV e)	5	197	1	7
13 14 15 16 17	Ford Focus Electric Volvo V60 Plug-In Nissan e-NV200 Citröen Berlingo EV e) Toyota Prius Plug-In	45	169 92 67 65 37	1 0 0 0 0	11 5 N/A N/A 6
18 19 20 21 21 23 24 25	Renault Twizy Renault Kangoo ZE BMW i8 Opel Ampera Audi A3 e-Tron Renault Fluence ZE Smart Fortwo ED Chevrolet Volt	18	27 26 19 18 18 8 5 2	0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0	14 8 N/A 12 N/A N/A 16 N/A
	TOTAL	1.545	20.079	100

e) Estimate

Source: Best Selling Cars Blog, gronnbil.no; ofvas.no

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