Portugal September 2015

Outlander PHEV New #1 Edition

EV Sales are rising fast in Portugal, with 99 units sold last month (Up 350% YoY!), and with YTD sales now at 803 units, the EV Share jumped again to a record 0,58%. With the projected final numbers of the year at around 1.100 units, plug-ins will sell more this year than all the previous years combined!

With such a high level of sales the ranking is bound to have several changes, the most important of them being the Mitsu Outlander PHEV reaching #1 both in the monthly ranking (For the fourth time in a row, by the way...) and also in the YTD chart, signaling the first time that a PHEV ever reaches such heights in Portugal.

A curious fact, considering the diferente EV history(1) that the neighboring Spain has, is that not only the japanese SUV also reached #1 in spanish lands last month, but currently both countries share the same top 4 positions (Outlander - Leaf - i3 - Zoe).

Looking at other changes, the VW Golf GTE climbed one position to #7, the Renault Kangoo ZE got its mojo back, jumping to #9, enabling it to recover the LCV Best seller title, but the Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia twins remain close, so this should be a thrilling race to the end.

The Audi A3 e-Tron was down to #13, while below it the Porsche Cayenne Plug-In climbed two positions to #15.

In the manufacturers ranking, Mitsubishi (25% Share) kicked out Nissan (20%) from the leadership, enabling the japanese carmaker to reach #1 for the first time ever, followed by Renault (18) and BMW (14%).

Pl	Portugal	Sept.	2015	%	Pl '14
1	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV	26	195	24	4
2	Nissan Leaf	15	146	15	2
3 4	BMW i3 * Renault Zoe	20 7	100 62	12 8	1 5
5 6 7 7 9 10 11 12 13	Renault Twizy Peugeot iOn Toyota Prius Plug-In Volkswagen Golf GTE Renault Kangoo ZE Nissan e-NV200 / Evalia Tesla Model S Mercedes B-Class ED Audi A3 e-Tron	2 8 7 2 1 2	50 48 28 28 21 14 13 12 11	6 6 3 3 3 2 2 1 1	3 20 12 N/A 8 8 N/A N/A N/A
13 15 16 17 17 17 20 20 22 22 24 24 24	Volvo V60 Plug-In Porsche Cayenne Plug-In BMW i8 Volkswagen e-Up! Mercedes S500 Plug-In Volkswagen e-Golf Mitsubishi I-Miev Smart Fortwo ED Opel Ampera Porsche Panamera Plug-In Citroen Berlingo EV Kia Soul EV Citroen C-Zero	1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1	11 10 9 8 8 8 6 6 3 3 1 1 1	1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0	14 13 7 11 N/A 15 15 6 18 8 20 20 N/A
	TOTAL	99	803	100

Source: ACAP

* - 13Bev + 7 Rex

(1) - #1's in Portugal (Spain) throughout the years:

2010 - Nissan Leaf (Think City);

2011 - Nissan Leaf (Mitsubishi I-Miev);

2012 - Renault Twizy (Renault Twizy);

2013 - Renault Twizy (Nissan Leaf);

2014 - BMW i3 (Nissan Leaf);

2015 - Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV).

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ADAS: The ecosystem's next frontier

At DevCon last week, Renesas showcased their ADAS concept vehicle. It was just what you would expect from an advanced demonstration, combining radar, lidar, cameras, V2X, algorithms, multiple displays and a huge amount of software to make it all work. They were talking about sensor fusion and complete surround view and, well, you get the picture.

What isn’t readily obvious as you experience the demo is the investment made and the collaboration required by Renesas and their ADAS ecosystem.

Partnership is a seldom recognized cornerstone of what will ultimately become true sensor fusion. It seems, to me at least, unlikely that anyone will be able to develop the entire system on their own. As processors become more and more powerful, the discrete ECUs will start to collapse into less distributed architectures with much more functionality on each chip. The amount of data coming into and being transmitted by the vehicle will continue to grow and the need to secure it will grow alongside. V2X, high definition map data, algorithms, specialized silicon, vision acceleration and more will become the norm in every vehicle.

How about QNX Software Systems? Are we going to do all of this on our own? I doubt it. Instead, we will continue to build on the same strategy that has helped take us to a leadership position in the infotainment market: collaborating with best of breed companies to deliver a solution on a safety-certified foundation that customers can leverage to differentiate their products.

The view from above at Renesas DevCon.

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