Automotive
I. A Year Ago - Hits and Misses
A year ago, i made some forecasts regarding 2015, let's see how they worked out:
USA
* Leaf will be #1 - Miss, it was #2, behind the Tesla Model S;
* 150.000 sales for the US EV market - 115k units, significantly below the forecast.
Japan
* Leaf #1 - Not really, Mitsu has finally beaten Nissan's hatch;
* 32.000 units - 25k sales, big disappointment.
* Renault Zoe #1 - Hit, how hard could it be to miss this one?
* 19.000 units - Frankly above, with 27k sales, the french EV market has finally found its Joie de Vivre.
* German Car #1 - Big miss, the Kia Soul EV came out of nowhere to win this one.
* 20.000 sales for the German EV Market - 24k sales, (finally) a forecast hitting the target (Sort of).
Netherlands
* Outlander PHEV #1 - Hit, in one of the most dramatic twists of 2015, the Outlander PHEV took the leadership crown in the last month of the year from the
* 19.000 units sold in the Dutch EV market - 43k sales, a tremendous jump, although motivated by fiscal changes...
Norway
* Leaf #1 - Big Miss, it didn't stood a chance to beat the VW e-Golf, ending the year in #3;
* 25.000 units in Norway - 35k beating even the best expectations.
China
* BYD Qin #1 - Hit, but Qin was losing power in the last months of the year;
* 120.000 units - A number that sounded ambitious at the time, until we saw what really happened, with 207k sales sold. In One Year.
II. Engines of Growth
* By EV Share
One of them is pretty easy to discover, after all, the Norwegian EV performance continues to be the poster-child for the EV Scene, with the market share now at 23% vs 14% in 2014, or the good surprise, if inflated, that happened in The Netherlands, with the EV Share jumping from 3.9% to 9.6%.
But there were other surprises, like Denmark (2.29% now vs 0.88% in '14), Sweden (2.62% in '15 vs 1.66% in '14) or Switzerland (1.98% vs 0.75%). But the most impressive market was Hong Kong, with the EV Share there shooting from 0,44% in '14 to 4.84% now! And all (Well, mostly) thanks to those 2.221 Teslas sold there...
* By Volume
EV Share is important, but even more fundamental is the volume increase, and in this case China made all the headlines, with 150.000 more units being sold in 2015 than in the previous year...
Others have also progressed, like The Netherlands (From 15k to 43k) or Norway (34k vs 20k), while the UK (14k to 28k), continues to outpace the growth of France (27k vs 16k) and Germany (24k vs 13k), as it prepares itself to be the largest european EV Market in...2017?
III. 2015 vs 2014
Let's compare #1's of this year with the ones of 2014 (Previous winner):
Leaf - Italy (Like in 2014); Estonia (Leaf in 2013 and 2014); Ireland (Leaf since 2011).
Outlander PHEV - Netherlands (Like in 2013 and 2014); Japan (Nissan Leaf); UK (Like in 2014); Sweden (Like in 2014); Australia (Like in 2014); New Zealand (Like in 2014); Spain (Nissan Leaf); Portugal (BMW i3 in 2014); Poland (BMW i3 in 2014); Romania (Like in 2014).
Zoe - France (Like in 2013 and 2014); Slovenia (Tesla Model S in '14).
BMW i3 - Czech Republic (Like in 2014); South Africa.
Model S - Switzerland (Like in 2014); Belgium (Like in 2014); USA (Nissan Leaf); Canada (Chevrolet Volt); Denmark (Nissan Leaf); Austria (Renault Zoe in '14); Hong Kong (BMW i3 in '14); Finland (Outlander PHEV in '14).
Renault Samsung SM3 ZE - South Korea (Since 2013).
BYD Qin - China (Like in 2014).
VW e-Golf - Norway (In '14 - Nissan Leaf); Iceland (Nissan Leaf in '14).
Kia Soul EV - Germany (In '14 - BMW i3)
Examining this, we can that the Chevy Volt was wiped out from the map, losing Canada, while the Nissan Leaf lost six(!) countries in one year, two of them to a direct competitor (Norway and Iceland to the e-Golf), holding on to just three countries.
Mitsubishi's SUV is now the largest collector of #1's, with 10 markets crowning it as the Best Seller, with the most important conquest being its home market, Japan.
But the biggest winner of 2015 was the Tesla Model S, with six new markets won in 2015, which together with the two that it already had, sums eight markets where the Model S is Best Seller.
