Markets Roundup March 2013

Now manufactured in three continents, Leaf sales are rising everywhere

Analyzing EV's charts by countries, there's changes to be reckoned: In the US, the Nissan Leaf is back to #1, in Japan the Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-In interrupted the Leaf reign and in Canada the Volt had to share the top spot with the Leaf.

There are new leaders also in Denmark (Nissan Leaf), Switzerland (Again the Leaf), Iceland (Prius PHEV) and Estonia (Yet again the Nissan Leaf), these last two countries crowned the I-Miev last year, so this confirms the trend that the tiny japanese BEV can't secure its sales when faced with more competitive competition. And right now the Leaf holds #1 spot in 9* countries, not bad, eh?

Looking at Plug In market share by countries, it´s a mixed bag: While some are jumping north of the 1% barrier (France, Japan and Sweden) and the all important US market is nearing the 0,5% threshold, most of Europe is suffering with the crisis, the plug-in-friendly Netherlands saw electric market share go down from 1,1% last year to 0,6%, Estonia went down too from an amazing 2,4% in 2012 to a paltry 0,1%, crisis battered Spain decreased from 0,24% to just 0,07%, same story in Austria (0,06% instead of 0,30%) and Ireland (0,04% vs 0,23%) and even EU neutral Switzerland saw it's EV market share reduced to 0,25%, down from 0,42 in '12.

5.305 units of the Chery QQ3 EV were sold in China last year

Recently there was available new data regarding EV's in China and the numbers are surprising, there were 12.791 EV sales in 2012 and some 3.175 sales in the first quarter of this year, putting China right next to France as the third largest Plug In market in the world and i'll be giving more info on this in the next days.

Right now, this data is important because adding China to the other three large EV markets (USA, Japan and France), means that the importance of these 4 major markets is tremendous, putting it in perspective, 7 out of 8 plug ins are sold here, making 88% of all EV sales. It doesn't take rocket science to see that much of the future of plug ins will be decided in these four countries.



* - USA, Japan, Norway, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Ireland and Estonia

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Goodbye passwords, hello biometrics

Let's face it — passwords suck.

Every day we have to recall all manner of alphanumeric combinations for bank PINs, network log-ons, corporate email, social networking, and e-commerce. According to Microsoft Research, the average user types eight passwords per day.

During a talk at last year's SAE Convergence, Joseph Carra from the US Department of Transportation said, “Passwords have to go” ... a breath of fresh air for those of us who rely heavily on the "forgot password" option. The stage is set, according to Carra, for biometrics to replace passwords in the vehicle.

Using biometrics for driver preferences is nothing new — my favorite example is a car seat that can identify you by the shape of your butt — but using them to replace passwords makes perfect sense.

Ultrasound fingerprinting, iris scans, facial recognition, signature dynamics, voice recognition, keystroke dynamics, hand geometry, skin patterns, and foot dynamics are already being used in enterprise security, law enforcement, border control, ATM transactions, and so on. And second-gen biometrics promise to pump up the Sci-Fi factor with neural wave analysis, electro-physiological biometrics, skin luminescence, body odor, and so on.

Many technologies eventually find their way into the car after becoming popular elsewhere — mobile telephony, media players, GPS navigation, etc. I can’t think of too many world-changing technologies that got their start inside the car. But given the innovative trajectory of today’s auto industry, that may be about to change.

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