USA April 2013

Theme of the Month: White. To start it, a handsome Ford Fusion Energi

At 7.253 units sold in April, sales were down 8% regarding March but they are still way ahead Year-on-Year and plug in share rose this month to 0,56%, almost doubling last year's share (0,30%).

In the podium, same as last month: Model S in #1 with a new sales record (2.200), Nissan Leaf in #2 with the second best ever month (1.937 units) and the Volt in third at 1.306 sales, down a worrying 11% regarding April 2012 and rising just 3% YTD.

But it's in the next positions that things get interesting, while the Prius (#4) and Ford C-Max (#5) see their sales decline to 599 and 411 units respectively, in #6 the Ford Fusion Energi establishes a new sales record at 365 units, in three months on sale it has always increased their numbers, one wonders how many months will Ford's midsize sedan need to get to number four.

For the rest of the market, Honda registers a new sales record for the Accord Plug-In with...55 units.    

Speaking of sedans, all three models that got record sales this month (Model S, Fusion and Accord) belong to the large side of cars, is it coincidence, lack of competition or consumer preference? To be seen in the coming months...

Pl	USA	April	YTD'13		YTD'12	13 vs '12
1	Tesla Model S	2.200	6.950		N/A	N/A
2	Chevrolet Volt	1.306	5.550		5.377	3,22%
3	Nissan Leaf	1.937	5.476		2.103	260,39%
4	Toyota Prius Plug-In	599	2.952		2.552	15,67%
5	Ford C-Max Energi	411	1.577		N/A	N/A
6	Ford Fusion Energi	365	779		N/A	N/A
7	Mitsubishi I-Miev	127	752		215	349,77%
8	Ford Focus Electric	147	566		a)	a)
9	Toyota RAV4 EV	70	282		N/A	N/A
10	Honda Accord Plug-In	55	100		N/A	N/A
11	Honda Fit EV	22	68		N/A	N/A
12	Fisker Karma	14	66		a)	a)
13	Scion iQ EV		30		N/A	N/A
14	Smart Fortwo ED		2		2	0,00%
	TOTAL	7.253	25.150		10.832	232,18%

a) data not available

Source: insideevs.com; Hybrid Cars

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Report from Barcelona: first meeting of the W3C automotive business group

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the first face-to-face meeting of the W3C automotive business group and the honor of being nominated group co-chair. (The other co-chair is Adam Abramski, an open source project manager for Intel.) With more than 70 members, the group has already become the eight-largest group in the W3C, even though it is barely two months old. Clearly, it’s generating a lot of interest.

The meeting included three presentations and two contributions. I presented on the lessons we’ve learned with the QNX CAR platform, how we think the market is changing, and how these changes should drive HTML5 standardization efforts.

I presented my three “musts” for standardizing HTML5 in the car:

1. Must create something designed to run apps, not HMIs (unless HMIs come along for free)
2. Must focus on mobile developers as the target development audience
3. Must support integration of HTML5 environments with native environments like EB Guide and Qt

I described some of the changes that have resulted from the alignment of the QNX CAR platform with the Apache Cordova framework, and why they are crucial to our HTML5 work. Unfortunately, we didn't have our W3C contribution ready due to these changes, but members generally agreed that having a standard consistent with mobile development was an appropriate course change.

Tizen and GenIVI gave presentations about their vehicle APIs. Tizen has contributed its APIs, but GenIVI hasn't yet — still waiting on final approvals. Webinos contributed its APIs before the meeting, but didn’t deliver a presentation on its contribution; members had reviewed the Webinos work before the meeting.

The meeting was a great chance to sit down with people I don’t normally meet. Overall, the group is moving in the right direction, creating a standard that can help automakers bring the goodness of HTML5 into the car.

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