Spain December 2015

Important win in Spain for the Kangoo ZE

Last Minute Win for the Outlander PHEV

Some 350 units were registered last month, with sales up 23% YoY and the EV Share rising slightly to 0,29%, a record high, a positive result that this time isn't due to fleet deals, but to a new incentives package that has just begun.

Looking to annual figures, the 3.015 units sold this year represent a 54% increase over the 2014 result, which itself was a 53% increase over 2013.

In December, the big news were the last minute leadership change, with the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV removing the Smart Fortwo ED by just one(!) unit. This is like FC Barcelona winning La Liga to Real Madrid in the last minute of the last Round.

There were other significant changes, the Renault Kangoo ZE jumped two positions to #5, with the added bonus of surpassing the Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia twins in the race for Best-Selling LCV. Continuing with the football analogy, this would be like Deportivo La Coruña reaching the UEFA League in the last Round, at home of the direct competitor Espanyol Barcelona.

Looking at the manufacturers ranking, the chronic leader Renault won the race, with 25% Share, earning its fourth consecutive Manufacturers award, while Nissan was Second, with 20% share, followed by Mitsubishi (13%), in the last place of the Podium.

Below, you will find the 2015 Trophy Room:

Best Selling PHEV & SUV: Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, 389 units. Also last year winner in these two categories, the japanese SUV this year managed to win also the Best Selling Model trophy, a first for a PHEV;

Best Selling BEV & Small Car: Smart Fortwo ED, 388 units. Smart only won this because of the Car2Go fleet deal, if it wasn't for that, the Nissan Leaf would have renewed the Best Selling Pure Electric trophy, ditto for the Renault Zoe in the Small Car category;

Best Selling Van: Renault Kangoo ZE, 267 units. After another thrilling race with the Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia twins, the veteran french LCV managed to recover in 2015 the title lost last year to Nissan, with a record 267 sales and the best position (#5) in the ranking since 2012;

Rookie Of The Year: Audi A3 e-Tron, 102 units. Audi's plug-in managed to win this contest, profiting from the weaker performance of the VW Golf GTE (79 units) in this market, thus succeeding the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV in this category.   

Looking at the BEV / PHEV share, PHEV's gained significant ground, growing from 15% in 2014, to 25% now.

In 2016 the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe will try to remove the Outlander PHEV from the leadership, while Tesla will surely do much better than the 10 units registered this year. As for sales predictions, continuing with the 50% growth rate of the last couple of years, i would say some 4.500 units will be sold here.

Pl	Spain	Dec.	YTD'15	%	'14Pl
1	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	57	389	13	3
2 3 4	Smart Fortwo ED Nissan Leaf Renault Zoe	17 35	388 344 312	13 11 10	8 1 2
5 6	Renault Kangoo ZE Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia	76 50	267 257	9 9	7 6
7	BMW i3	30	251	8	4
8	Renault Twizy	28	176	6	5
9	Audi A3 e-Tron	3	104	3	N/A
10	Kia Soul EV	7	89	3	22
11 12 12 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 20 22 23 24 24 26 27 28 29 29 29 32 32	Volkswagen Golf GTE Piaggio Porter EV Porsche Cayenne Plug-In BMW i8 BMW X5 40e Plug-In Volkswagen e-Golf Porsche Panamera Plug-In Volkswagen e-Up! Mercedes S500e Mercedes B-Class ED Volvo V60 Plug-In Peugeot Partner EV Tesla Model S Citröen C-Zero Toyota Prius Plug-In Mercedes C350e Peugeot iOn Porsche 918 BYD e6 Citroen Berlingo EV Volkswagen XL1 Mitsubishi I-Miev Ford Focus Electric	5 17 3 16 2 1 1 1 1 2 1	79 76 62 36 28 21 18 16 15 14 14 13 10 8 8 5 4 3 2 2 2 1 1	3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0	N/A N/A N/A 10 N/A 13 11 18 N/A N/A 9 20 14 22 14 N/A N/A 22 14 14 N/A 18  N/A
	TOTAL	353	3.015	100

Source: forococheselectricos.com

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Why is software the key to bringing augmented reality to cars?

Guest post by Alex Leonov, marketing director, Luxoft Automotive.

While self-driving vehicles are gradually becoming a reality, more and more of today’s cars roll out from factories featuring advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). We are quickly getting used to adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, parking assistance, lane departure warning, and many other features that make driving safer and the driver’s job easier. Data from cameras, sensors, and V2X infrastructure feed into ADAS systems, increasing their accuracy and efficiency. These systems are important steps toward fully autonomous driving, but the ultimate responsibility for decision making still lies with a driver.

The more that cars become connected, the more the average driver can be bombarded by information while driving. “In 500 feet make a right turn.” “You have an incoming call from Christine.” “You have a new message on Facebook.” “You are over the speed limit.” This may not be so big of a distraction under normal conditions. But sometimes, when driving in hectic city traffic or in a snow storm, it is critical to keep eyes on the road, while still receiving essential information. The good news is, the technology is already there to remedy this.

Heads up for HUDs
Keeping the driver’s eyes on the road is a priority, and head-up displays (HUDs) can accomplish just that. They project alerts and navigation prompts right on the windshield. Analysts predict an explosive growth of HUDs with the market reaching close to US$100 billion by 2020. The bulk of HUDs are relatively simple combiners, but more advances in wide-field-of-view HUDs are coming soon.

Projecting alerts and navigation prompts directly on the windshield.

HUDs are perfect for presenting information in a convenient, natural way, and giving the driver a feeling of being in control. But HUDs are only as good as the information they display. That is why it is critical to have solid and reliable data processing and decision-making algorithms, running on a reliable OS, that can prioritize and filter data. The resulting alerts and prompts must be communicated to a driver in a clear, transparent way.

Computer vision, also known as machine vision, is a key to processing the endless flow of data. With its human-like image recognition ability, computer vision processes road scenes, and the system fuses data from multiple sources. Add in a natural representation of processing outcomes in the form of augmented reality, while tracking driver’s pupils, and you have a completely new level of driver’s experience — safe and intuitive.

Next-generation driving experience
At Luxoft, we’ve been working on making this experience a reality. The result is CVNAR, a computer vision and augmented reality solution. CVNAR is a powerful software framework containing mathematical algorithms that process a vast amount of road data in real time to generate intuitive prompts and alerts. CVNAR has built-in algorithms for road and pedestrian detection, vehicle recognition and tracking, lane detection, facade recognition and texture extraction, road sign recognition, and parking space search. It performs relative and absolute positioning and easily integrates with navigation, the map database, sensors, and other data sources. A unique feature of CVNAR is its extrapolation engine for latency avoidance.

Detecting and recognizing road signs, pedestrians, traffic lanes, gas stations, and other objects.

CVNAR works perfectly with LCD displays and smartglasses, but it is ultimately built for HUDs. Data from cameras, sensors, CAN, and navigation maps are fused and processed to create an extendable metadata output that describes all augmented objects. It takes a HUD and an eye-tracking camera to implement CVNAR in a vehicle. CVNAR will track the driver’s gaze and adjust the position of the augmented objects in the driver’s line of sight to make sure they don’t obstruct anything important — all in real time.

Alerting the driver to an empty parking spot.

This is not all that CVNAR can do. New car models come packed with infotainment features that take time to learn and memorize. The CVNAR-based smartphone app can help. It turns your smartphone into an interactive guide. Point your phone camera to your dashboard and use augmented prompts to find out more about a particular car function. It can work under the hood, too.

Era of a software-defined car
A modern car runs on code as much as it runs on gasoline (or a battery-powered electric motor). Today, it takes over 100 million lines of software code to get a premium car going, and the amount of software necessary keeps expanding. At Luxoft, we are excited about the car’s digital future, and we work every day to help bring it about, by developing cutting-edge automotive solutions for leading global vehicle manufacturers.

Offering a wide range of embedded software development and integration services for in-vehicle infotainment and telematics systems, digital instrument clusters, and head-up displays, Luxoft has developed User Experience (UX) and Human Machine Interface (HMI) technology for millions of vehicles on the road today. We push the envelope of technology in such areas as situation-aware HMI, computer vision and augmented reality, while Luxoft’s products, the Populus and Teora UX and HMI design tool chains, power the development of award-winning automotive HMIs and slash time to market.

Software holds the key to the future of cars. It is essential to creating a customized user experience in vehicles. With over-the-air updates, software offers unmatched flexibility and scalability. Finally, it takes safety to the next level with its ability to simulate human-like logic through complex algorithms.

You can view Luxoft’s CVNAR solution running on a QNX-based ADAS demo this week at CES, in the BlackBerry booth: LVCC North Hall, #325.

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About Alex
Alex Leonov has been in the automotive and IT industry for over 18 years in various business development and marketing roles. Currently, Alex leads the global marketing efforts of Luxoft Automotive.

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