Renault Zoe & Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-In Lead The Pack In Europe (April EV Registrations)

Originally published on EV Obsession.

Note the usual disclaimer about European EV sales.*

Electric vehicle (EV) sales figures for the European market during the month of April 2015 are now in, and things are looking good. The continent had its third best month ever with regard to total EV sales — seeing a 40% growth rate as compared against April 2014.

Altogether, roughly 11,500 electric vehicles — this includes plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) of course — were registered during the month of April in the European market. This means that EVs now make up roughly 1% of the total new vehicle market. Not bad. EVs and PHEVs certainly have come quite some way over the last few years. It’s hard to say for sure, but they certainly do seem to be on the verge of a breakout from niche status — though perhaps those sorts of changes are more a generational thing, and still a few years off?

With regard to April 2015 sales, the Renault Zoe and the Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-In were nearly tied at the top of the units sold list — with 1,728 units sold and 1,700 units sold, respectively. Following quite a ways behind those two was the Volkswagen e-Golf — with 1,022 units sold. In fourth, the Nissan LEAF was still going strong — with 978 units sold. Tesla did pretty well as well, with sales of 856 units during April.

Following those market leaders, we then had the Audi A3 e-tron (854), the Volkswagen Golf GTE (736), the BMW i3 (731), the Volkswagen e-Up! (278), the Nissan e-NV200/Evalia (230), the Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid (225), and the Mercedes B-Class ED (208).

What the numbers show is that while there are a great many models that are selling to some degree or another (especially in home markets), there are still some very clear market leaders.

*Note that these numbers are not perfect. They don’t actually cover all European countries, and they include a lot of estimates, but much of the data is very usefully gathered (or estimated) through the painstaking work of José Pontes, and it helps to show what the European EV market looks like — quite different from the US market.