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.
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.
