Spain March 2013

Funky Wheels for an airy, funky car. Will this image become a common sight?

Crisis Edition - Chapter One

With a global car market drop in Spain of 14%, the niche EV market suffered even more, with sales dropping 75% regarding last year. The surprising exception to this trend was the Mitsubishi I-Miev, selling 57 units in Q1, more than it did in the whole 2012 (31 units). With 46 of those 51 units being sold in March, something tells me that there might be a fleet deal behind these good numbers...

The other model to have significant sales in this horrible Quarter was the Renault Twizy with 39 sales, itself down 60% regarding last years performance. In third was the Nissan Leaf with...7 units sold.

Pl	Spain	Mar'13	YTD'13
1	Mitsubishi I-Miev	46	57
2	Renault Twizy	10	39
3	Nissan Leaf	2	7
4	Smart Fortwo ED	1	6
5	Toyota Prius Plug-In		5
6	Opel Ampera		3
7	Renault Kangoo ZE		1
8	Renault Fluence ZE		1
9	Chevrolet Volt	1	1
	TOTAL	60	120

Source: Manufacturers, Autoblog Español

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France March 2013

2013 Renault Zoe with some sensible alloys 

Zoe Edition

With a record 1.734 sales and 1,12% share, two thirds of it (1.089) belonging to the new Zoe, the french EV market steps up for another record year, a greater achievement considering that the overall market is declining 16%.

We have to question how high will the new french supermini have to get to be considered a sales success, in my view 500 sales/month would be a minimal number, 1.000 would be good and anything above 1.500 would be a resounding hit for Renault.

In a distant second was Zoe's utilitarian cousin, the Kangoo ZE at a stable 319 sales, with the Alliance cousin Nissan Leaf achieving third place, reaching the hundreds threshold for the first time since October.

Down the ranking there are many models suffering from the arrival of Renault's new Zoe, like the I-Miev triplets (C-Zero down 86%, iOn - 11% and the I-Miev is still at zero in '13), Bolloré (-80%), Mia Electric (-37%) or even their own Renault's Fluence ZE (-95%).

Pl	France	Mar'13	YTD'13		March'12	13 vs '12
1	Renault Zoe	1.089	1.599		N/A	N/A
2	Renault Kangoo ZE	319	1.051		a)	a)
3	Nissan Leaf	101	224		95	6,32%
4	Bolloré Blue Car	50	158		261	-80,84%
5	Renault Twizy	58	133		a)	a)
6	Smart Fortwo ED	45	115		0	-
7	Mia Electric	22	79		35	-37,14%
8	Peugeot iOn	38	69		34	11,76%
9	Opel Ampera	5	27		a)	a)
10	Citröen C-Zero	3	22		22	-86,36%
11	Chevrolet Volt	1	6		a)	a)
12	Fisker Karma	1	6		a)	a)
13	Renault Fluence ZE	1	5		20	-95,00%
14	Tesla Roadster	1	1		0	-
15	Mitsubishi I-Miev	0	0		1	-100,00%
	TOTAL	1.734	6.990		468	270,51%

a) Data not available

Source: Automobile Propre, Manufacturers

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