Portugal October 2014

"Oh Sunny Day...."

Better Days Edition

There were some 25 EV's sold last month in Portugal, placing the EV Share at 0,22%, a smidge below last year performance (0,23%), but the 266 units sold this year are already a record number for this small EV market.

"So why isn't the EV Share higher?" - One might ask.

The answer lies in the recovery of the Portuguese Auto Market, with growth rates at some 40-50%, following the electric segment growth.

Looking at the models ranking, the Nissan Leaf recovered a bit, selling 9 units, cementing the YTD Second Place, while the BMW i8 registered 4 units, an impressive result, which becomes even more amazing if we consider that the smaller i3 only sold one unit and those four units allowed it to be #2 in October.

The Renault Twizy also outsold the Zoe (4 vs 2), while the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV had 26 confirmed registered units until last September, so i will make an estimate of another 4 units in October, making 30 sales YTD and 11% share of the EV market, a fantastic result for a PHEV in Portugal, considering that last year ALL PHEV's had only 9% share.

With PHEV's finally being granted fiscal benefits in 2015, it wouldn't be surprising if the Japanese SUV became a serious fighter for the Best Seller title next year and plug-in hybrids as a whole expanded significantly their current 25% share of the market.

In the manufacturers ranking, Renault (35% Share) kicked BMW (27%) from the Top Spot, while Nissan continues in #3, with 18% Share.

Pl	Portugal	Oct.	2014	%	Pl '13
1	BMW i3	1	60	23	7
2	Nissan Leaf	9	49	18	3
3 4	Renault Twizy Mit. Outlander PHEV e)	4 4	41 30	15 11	1 N/A
5	Renault Zoe	2	22	8	5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15	Smart Fortwo ED Porsche Panamera Plug-In BMW i8 Toyota Prius Plug-In Volkswagen e-Up! Mitsubishi I-Miev Opel Ampera Volvo V60 Plug-In Volkswagen e-Golf Peugeot iOn	4 1	17 12 11 9 6 3 2 2 1 1	6 5 4 3 2 1 1 1 0 0	6 N/A N/A N/A N/A 9 8 N/A N/A 2
	TOTAL	25	266	100

Source: Best Selling Cars Blog; ACAP

e) Estimate

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Germany October 2014

Second Life Edition

 Now that there's a new ICE Smart Fortwo flooding the streets of German Megacities, the older ED version seems to have been blessed with a Second Life here, performing its best result of the year (263 units), for how long will this go no seems to be the question, but for now this is the second consecutive Best Seller title for the electric Smart, allowing it to recover the Second Place in the YTD chart.

The Zoe also had a brilliant result (178 units), it seems that Renault is finally understanding how to sell its car properly, while in Third there's the BMW i3, selling just 133 units, sales lately have been dwindling in its home country, is this a case of production constraints, or is something else playing here?

The Outlander PHEV (89 units) was #5 and is now a frequent appearance in the monthly Top 5.

Pl	Model	Sales
1	Smart Fortwo ED	263
2	Renault Zoe	178
3	BMW i3	133
4	Volkswagen e-Up! e)	120
5	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	89

Looking at the YTD ranking, the first positions only had one relevant change with the aforementioned rise of the Smart ED to #2, but the second half of the ranking had several changes, with the Merc B-Class ED in #18, while the S500 Plug-In is #19.

With 32 models now on sale, it is now possible to make segmentation, in the city cars, the VW e-Up! and Smart are fighting for #1, the Superminis are dominated by the BMW i3, the e-Golf is still to catch the Nissan Leaf in the Compact segment, the Volvo V60 Plug-In is alone in the Midsize cars, while the larger-sized segment is dominated by the Tesla Model S, but this month the #1 was for the Merc S500...

The SUV's are Outlander PHEV territory, although the Cayenne might have a word on this next year, while the ever improving BMW i8 (75 units!) has no real competition in the Sports Cars segment. Finally, MPV's and LCV's have few representatives, with the Mercedes B-Class winning the MPV segment and the Kangoo ZE the LCV's.

Pl	Germany	Oct.	YTD'14	%	'13 Pl
1	BMW i3	133	2.002	20	5
2	Smart Fortwo ED	263	1.286	12	1
3	Volkswagen e-Up! e)	120	1.234	12	9
4	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	89	933	9	N/A
5	Renault Zoe	178	919	9	2
6	Nissan Leaf	74	746	7	3
7	Tesla Model S	17	593	6	8
8	Renault Twizy	33	535	5	4
9	Volkswagen e-Golf e)	79	501	5	N/A
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 31	Volvo V60 Plug-In BMW i8 Audi A3 e-Tron Porsche Panamera Plug-In Toyota Prius Plug-In Mitsubishi I-Miev Volkswagen Golf GTE  Opel Ampera Mercedes B-Class ED Mercedes S500 Plug-In Porsche Cayenne Plug-In Renault Kangoo ZE Peugeot iOn Porsche 918 e) Citröen C-Zero Nissan e-NV200 Ford Focus Electric Volvo C30 Electric Kia Soul EV Chevrolet Volt Volkswagen XL1 e) Renault Fluence ZE Citröen Berlingo EV	33 75 5 24 8 12 16 13 17 26 30 1 4 1 11 2 1	353 299 255 122 120 106 105 90 44 43 38 33 29 28 27 20 19 17 12 11 5 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	11 N/A N/A 16 N/A 10 N/A 6 N/A N/A N/A N/A 13 N/A 7 N/A 14 N/A N/A 15 N/A 12 N/A
	TOTAL	1.265	10.527	100

Source: kba.de

e) Estimate

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