Norway July 2016

Tough life for these two EV's

It Finally Happened

In June there were 2.998 EV's sold, up 17% YoY, with the EV Share slightly down to 28,7%, the strongest reason for this slowdown in sales has to do with buyers holding off for the increased range BEV's, coming in the last quarter of the year.

The recent slowdown in the BEV front (Down 38%) was counterbalanced by the recent PHEV surge (Up 140%), and that is reflected in the EV monthly models ranking, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (504 units) was once again the Monthly Best Seller, the third fourth fifth consecutive time that a plug-in hybrid wins that honor, with the remaining podium positions also belonging to PHEV's: The VW Golf GTE was Second, with 412 units, followed by its larger GTE relative, the Passat, with 294 units.

The VW e-Golf is back to the downward trend, with 279 units registered, its worst performance since 2014. A case of buyers waiting for the upcoming longer-range version, or are the GTE brethrens cannibalizing sales?

Pl	Model	Sales
1	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	504
2	Volkswagen Golf GTE	412
3	Volkswagen Passat GTE	294
4	Volkswagen e-Golf	279
5	Nissan Leaf	237

Looking at the Year-to-date EV ranking, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV has finally risen to the First Place, a first for a PHEV in Norway, displacing the VW e-Golf to Second, after 18 months of leadership(!)

The Tesla Model S (43 units, worst result in 20 months) stumbled two positions to #7 to the benefit of the VW Passat GTE, that climbed the same two positions to #5.

A final reference to the Luxury SUV race, the current leader is the BMW X5 PHEV, #12 with 672 units, followed by the Volvo XC90 PHEV, 171 units behind, with the remaining competition far behind these two, the race should be confined to these two, but the Audi Q7 e-Tron had 68 sales in its first full sales month, if these numbers are confirmed with other good performances in the future, Audi's big wagon-on-stilts SUV might still surprise the aforementioned two.

Looking at the manufacturers ranking, Volkswagen (31%) continues in the lead, followed now by Mitsubishi (14%), that displaced Nissan (13%, down 1%) from the Second Place.

Pl	Norway	July	YTD	%	'15Pl
1	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	504	3.347	13	4
2	Volkswagen e-Golf	279	3.138	12	1
3	Nissan Leaf	237	2.829	11	3
4	Volkswagen Golf GTE	412	2.507	10	6
5	Volkswagen Passat GTE	294	1.458	6	20
6 7	Renault Zoe Tesla Model S	79 43	1.309 1.284	5 5	8 2
8 9	Audi A3 e-Tron BMW i3	170 98	1.283 1.203	5 5	7 5
10	Mercedes B250e	104	865	3	10
11	Kia Soul EV	102	751	3	11
12	BMW X5 40e	34	672	3	19
13	Volkswagen e-Up!	44	667	3	9
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35	BMW 225xe Active Tourer Mercedes C350e Volvo V60 Plug-In Volvo XC90 T8  Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia Mercedes GLC350e Peugeot iOn BMW 330e Mitsubishi I-Miev Citröen C-Zero Mercedes GLE500e Peugeot Partner EV Porsche Cayenne Plug-In Renault Kangoo ZE Audi Q7 e-Tron Smart Fortwo ED BMW i8 Tesla Model X Ford Focus Electric Citröen Berlingo EV Renault Twizy Mercedes S500e Others	70 74 51 77 76 59 8 24 22 7 15 7 3 68 1 10 23 1 2	545 539 511 501 482 363 199 158 146 140 120 80 78 73 70 32 31 30 22 11 5 4 6	2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0	N/A 22 12 N/A 14 N/A 13 N/A 26 16 27 18 24 17 N/A 15 25 N/A 21 23 29 30
	TOTAL	2.998	25.459	100

Models breakdown by Fuel Source

The percentage of plug-ins in the general ranking is so significant, that we've decided to make a separate table for the breakdown of models by fuel source:

Pl	Model	Sales
1	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	504
2	Volkswagen Golf GTE	412
3	Skoda Octavia	301
4	Volkswagen Passat GTE	294
5 6 7 8 9 10	Volkswagen Golf ICE Volkswagen e-Golf Toyota RAV4 Toyota Yaris Toyota Auris Nissan Leaf	281 279 277 266 251 237

With 29% share, the EV's performance in the general ranking is increasingly more relevant, of the 972 units sold by the leader VW Golf in July, only 281, or 29%, didn't had a Plug.

If we split models by fuel source, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV was the best selling model, outselling the Golf GTE and the Skoda Octavia (BTW, when will we have a PHEV Octavia, Skoda?), with another PHEV, the VW Passat GTE, in #4, making it three plug-in hybrids in the Top 4 positions.

The remaining two Plug-ins in the Top 10 were BEV's, in #6 we have the VW e-Golf, only two units behind the regular ICE versions of the VW Golf, while in #10 the Nissan Leaf makes itself noticed.

Read More

Batteries June 2016 (Updated) w/ Bus batteries ranking draft

The Rise and Rise of BYD 

EV Battery sales are growing 80%YoY, which is even more than the plug-in car market (+/- 50%), something that can be explained by the increasing size of the average EV battery. With the longer range BEV's just around the corner, expect Battery sales to grow even faster than today.

- No surprises in the leadership, Panasonic is comfortably above, thanks to the continued success of battery-hungry Tesla, but sales to the VW Group have dropped, now that they are more focused on the less battery-heavy PHEV's. Looking at the rest of the year, expect sales to Toyota to restart in a significant way, thanks to the Prius Prime PHEV. So basically, here it's business as usual for Panasonic;

- BYD is on a never-ending growing trend, being the only manufacturer to significantly improve share (17% now vs 14% in December '15 and just 6% in 2014!) in the ranking, all while tripling production YoY, thanks not only to the increase in EV production, but also in the average size of their batteries, with the largest being the 80kWh of the 2016 BYD e6; 

- AESC, the joint venture between NEC and Nissan, has benefited from the recent uptick in Leaf sales, to hang on and maintain its market share (11%), while at the same time recovering the Third Place from LG Chem;

- LG Chem, with the Volt II not growing to the expected levels, the Korean hasn't been capable to follow the intense market growth, but there shouldn't be much worries here, as the New Gen batteries for the Chevy Bolt and others should pull them back into the Third Place;

 - Samsung has a partnership with BMW and with the German car maker plug-in sales improving, Samsung has also seen sales grow, albeit it wasn't enough to win market share, as many of BMW sales belonged to PHEV's. 

- BPP / CATL is the first of a trio of Chinese battery makers in the second half of the ranking, with Wanxiang (SAIC provider) in #9, and Air Lithium (Kandi provider), with the first two experiencing surging sales and beating in six months what they had sold in the whole of 2015.

- In a fast growing market, Lithium Energy Japan (GS Yuasa / Mitsubishi) sales actually have dropped, hampered by the sales drop of the Outlander PHEV and lack of new models by the Japanese car maker, having inclusively been surpassed by the third Korean battery maker, SK Group, now #7, thanks to the continued success of the Kia Soul EV and, most importantly, their venture into the Chinese EV market, having been battery providers for some of BAIC all-electric plug-ins;

- A final mention for the #11 E-Power (151) and #12 Tianneng (119), two other Chinese battery makers that help China to obtain 33% of the batteries market, when in the same period last year, they had only 22%. This 11% share increase in only a year is probably one reason why the Chinese government felt confident enough to open the local batteries market to foreign battery manufacturers, as it feels that it will help develop the domestic EV market without killing local battery makers.

Pl	Battery Makers	H1 2016 MWh	(H1)   2015 MWh	%'16	% '15
1	Panasonic	3.088	(1.931)4.552	37	38
2 3	BYD AESC	1.443 930	(461) 1.652 (705) 1.272	17 11	14 11
4 5 6	LG Chem BPP / CATL Samsung	623 435 343	(569) 1.432 (139)    397 (294)    504	7 5 4	12 3 4
7	SK Group	241	(N/A)   N/A	3	N/A
8 9	Mitsubishi/GS Yuasa Wanxiang	236 230	(241)   600 (157)    268	3 3	5 2
10	Air Lithium (Luoyang)	164	(N/A)   283	2	2
	TOTAL	8.492	12.289

One of the big (un)known secrets is the electric Buses success in China, while i don't have actual sales numbers, a good reader of EV Sales provided me some numbers of the largest battery providers for electric buses in China:

1. BYD 1.161 MWh

2. CATL 1.099 MWh

3. Guoxuan 483 MWh

If BYD is not a surprise, CATL, or Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited, has such a high output for buses, that together with their car business (435 MWh) with BPP, makes it somewhat of a Dark Horse, as a reader in CleanTechnica once asked me if there could be such a thing in the Chinese Batteries business. It seems we found it...

As for Guoxuan, it is the first time i see them, does anybody has any input on them?

Read More