France August 2016

It's "Aller a la Plage" Time

 (Not So) Slow Season

The French EV market had 1.658 registrations last month, a 43% improvement YoY, a positive result in August, typically one of the slowest selling months in France, due to the holiday season.

The EV Share is stable at 1.67%, a significant departure from the 1.41% of 2015.

Looking at the monthly models ranking, there weren't big surprises, apart from the fact that we have an almost 100% BEV Top 5, something increasingly harder to find in the European markets.

The Zoe continues to lead the way (as in the last 23 24 months...), followed this time by the Nissan Leaf (196 units), which displaced the Renault Kangoo ZE (188) to Third, with the Peugeot iOn reaching #4 and the BMW i3 in #5. 

Pl	Model	Sales
1	Renault Zoe	386
2	Nissan Leaf	196
3	Renault Kangoo ZE	188
4	Peugeot iOn	100
4	BMW i3	99

France is known for being a stable market, with little changes in the ranking, and August confirms this, one has to go down to #8, with the Kia Soul surpassing the Volvo XC90 T8, but despite the one position drop, Volvo's Knarr SUV has the Rookie Of The Year award waiting for it. 

Reversing what happened last month, the Citröen C-Zero surpassed its surfing-beach-loving e-Mehari brethren and regained the #13 place, with colder weather approaching, expect the small urban car to retain its lead over the convertible.

Different fortunes for the two high end SUV's from VAG: While the Porsche Cayenne Plug-In drops two places to #19 (Only 20 sales, worst performance in 17 months), the Audi Q7 e-Tron continues to impress, with 55 units registered in August, it was the best selling plug-in hybrid last month and jumped six positions to #28.  

Looking at the brands ranking, Renault (#1 since 2011) continues to be the Master In Command, with 43% share, followed at a distance by Nissan (14%) and BMW (9%).

Pl	France	Aug.	2016	%	'15Pl
1	Renault Zoe	386	7.481	34	1
2	Nissan Leaf	196	2.825	13	3
3	Renault Kangoo ZE	188	1.663	7	2
4	BMW i3 *	99	870	4	8
5	Peugeot iOn	100	829	4	9
6	Volkswagen Golf GTE	31	746	3	4
7	Bolloré Blue Car	57	675	3	5
8	Kia Soul EV	78	629	3	13
9 10	Volvo XC90 T8 Audi A3 e-Tron	17 22	569 494	3 2	N/A 6
11 12	Tesla Model S BMW X5 40e	31 29	485 452	2 2	10 20
13	Citröen C-Zero	40	449	2	15
14	Citröen e-Mehari	29	440	2	N/A
15	Renault Twizy	30	325	1	11
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 31 33 34 35	BMW 225xe Active Tourer Goupil Nissan e-NV200/Evalia ** Porsche Cayenne PHEV Peugeot Partner EV e) Volkswagen Passat GTE BMW 330e Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Bolloré Blue Summer e) Mercedes C350e Volkswagen e-Up! Citröen Berlingo EV Audi Q7 e-Tron  Volkswagen e-Golf Mitsubishi I-Miev Mercedes GLE500e Volvo V60 Plug-In BMW i8 Mercedes B250e Toyota Prius Plug-In Others	40 15 36 20 10 34 18 8 10 17 9 17 55 5 8 6 2 3 1 1 10	324 302 301 299 281 231 210 195 183 171 124 107 96 73 69 62 61 59 47 36 74	1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0	N/A 14 16 12 21 19 N/A 7 N/A 27 18 23 N/A 22 30 31 26 25 24 28
	TOTAL	1.658	22.237

* - 34 Bev + 65 Rex

** - 6 Pass + 30 LCV

Sources: Avere France

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China August 2016 (Updated)

MG Dynamo EV Concept

1-2 win for BYD

The Chinese market had more than 31.000 new EV's zooming the streets last month, a 95% increase over the same month last year, in-line with the annual growth rate, with the EV market share firmly above the 1% barrier, at 1.3%.

At this rhythm, the Chinese EV market is headed for some 450.000 units and 1.5% market share by December, 31^st, which will not only beat North America and Europe as major selling markets, both in volume and market share, but would also mean that China will absorb around half of the EV’s delivered in 2016.

All this while 95% of the market belongs to domestic brands. For the record, of the 5% left for foreign brands, 2% belong to Tesla, 1% to BMW, another 1% to Porsche and remaining 1% is for the remaining auto makers…

BYD once again won the models and manufacturers titles in August, but the winning model wasn’t the Tang SUV… 

Here’s August Top 5 Best Selling models individual performance:

#1 - BYD Qin: The 300 hp PHEV sedan has registered 3.106 units, its best performance in a year, continuing on its growing sales trend for the seventh time in a row and winning for the first time this year the Monthly Best Seller Trophy. China’s most popular plug-in, with over 62.000 units zooming around, is still far from its all-time record (4.030 units in July’15), but it will probably beat it until year end. Now, if BYD has production resources for that is whole different question…

#2 - BYD Tang: The 500 hp Chinese Cayenne continues its success story in the EV market, but deliveries dropped 17% regarding the previous month, to 2.502 units, the second consecutive drop for BYD’s SUV. Productions constraints or is the BYD flagship running out of customers?

#3 – Zotye Cloud EV: A major player last year, where it reached #5, Zotye’s small EV had its best performance of the year in August, with 2.116 units, and is now looking to recover lost sales, in order to reach last year heights, when it delivered 15.467 units of this tiny five-seater. 

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#4 – BYD e5: This electric sedan is to the BYD Qin the same as Sancho Panza is to D. Quixote (Or Sideshow Bob is to Krusty the Clown, for those unfamiliar with Cervantes work). Essentially a simpler and less fancy Qin EV300, with whom it shares the same body and specs (218 hp, 300 kms range), it aims at being popular with fleets and people who like to drive electric but don’t want the world to know about it. In August, the e5 broke its record, delivering 1.961 units, all while beating its Qin EV300 brethren by some 500 units. Sideshow Bob bested Krusty…

#5 – Zhidou D2 EV: The tiny two-seater reached once again the Top 5 ranking in August, with the Zotye D2 securing the Best Seller status of its class, with 1.938 units, a 95% increase YoY.

Article also published on CleanTechnica and EV Obsession.

Year-to-Date Ranking

In the podium positions there weren’t any changes, and we have to look down to the seventh spot to see some moves, the BYD e5 jumped three positions to #7, followed by the surprise of the month, with the Zotye Cloud EV shooting six positions to #8, looking to reach the #6 Chery eQ, currently the Best Selling city car.

The other two models climbing in the ranking were the Zotye E200 and BYD Qin EV300, both rising one position, to #14 and #15, respectively.

Worthy mentions to the Tesla Model X delivering 150 units, with last month being the first where a significant number of “X’s” were delivered in China, and also to the SAIC Roewe E50 all-electric car, finally selling in decent numbers (463 units in August), let’s see if it’s something to continue and, now that we are on this topic, if SAIC finally releases the MG Dynamo version of the car. I’ll take mine in white, with 100 hp and 200 kms range…

Looking at the manufacturers ranking, BYD is the perennial leader, with 33% market share, followed by BAIC (12%), which is cementing its dark horse status among Chinese EV makers, leaving Third Placed SAIC Roewe (8%) behind by a sizeable distance.

Finally, looking at the breakdown between BEV’s and PHEV’s, unlike other markets where plug-in hybrids are winning the upper hand, all-electric cars just continue improving its share, now at 69%, up 1% regarding last month.

Pl	China	August	YTD	%
1	BYD Tang	2.502	24.668	13
2	BYD Qin	3.106	15.266	8
3	BAIC E-Series EV	1.465	12.798	7
4	SAIC Roewe e550	1.446	12.222	6
5 6 7 8	BYD e6 Chery eQ BYD e5 Zotye Cloud EV	1.512 1.051 1.961 2.116	11.649 8.227 7.069 6.649	6 4 4 3
9	JMC E100	856	6.603	3
10	JAC i EV 4	541	6.601	3
11	Geely Emgrand EV	1.085	6.436	3
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20	BAIC EU260 Kandi K17 Cyclone Zotye E200 BYD Qin EV300 Zhidou D1 EV Zhidou D2 EV Changan Eado EV Tesla Model S Lifan 330 EV	1.601 1.002 1.547 1.464 598 1.938 559 641	6.347 5.968 5.460 5.264 5.241 4.286 3.720 3.711 3.593	3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2
	TOTAL Market	31.380	192.738	100

Editor’s note: As you might have noticed, there were some readjustments to the ranking, motivated by an update on the Zhidou numbers.

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