The Hyundai Kona EV and Kia Niro EV have won a lot of praise, as well as prestigious awards. The Kona EV even won the 2019 CleanTechnica Car of the Year award. These vehicles, as well as some other EV offerings from the companies, are stylish, offer long range, and come with creature comforts you’d expect in their price range.
South Korea is an interesting case in “Electric Vehicle World.” LG Chem, probably the most notable EV battery company not connected to Tesla, is based there. It seems like LG Chem has battery contracts with every single automaker (it might be more like 60%). SK Innovation and Samsung SDI, medium-sized battery producers, also call Korea home. And then there are Hyundai and Kia, or Hyundai–Kia if you combine them due to their intertwined investment structure. These large automakers have produced highly acclaimed electric vehicles, but they struggle to produce a large number of them — or just don’t care to do so.
Those of us who have followed the electric vehicle market for several years (or, for some of you, decades) can easily get complacent about where the EV revolution is and where it’s headed. We can be lulled into a semi-sleeping state by monthly sales reports, by routinely seeing EV market share of 1–2% in some markets, 5–10% in others, and 50% in Norway. We can be blown away by the Tesla Model 3’s success, while at the same time underestimating what it means.
Tesla, Tesla, Tesla — we know all about Tesla’s EV leadership. But who’s going to put the nail in the coffin of automotive laggards? Could it be Volkswagen?
The top 20 CleanTechnica articles of the past week included stories on Tesla charging costs, Tesla’s master plan, boosting the range of old EVs (in particular, the Nissan LEAF), fully developing solar power, and more. Scroll down below for the headlines.
California’s a huge market for Tesla, the Netherlands loves Tesla, Switzerland loves Tesla, but no state or country is as Tesla obsessed as Norway.
Once upon a time, I worked for San Mateo County. So, it is especially exciting for me to see that the Silicon Valley county is about to throw a ton of eggs into its electric vehicle ecosystem.
I reported the other day that the Model 3 was the 10th best selling vehicle in Sweden in July. I also reported that the Model 3 was the 9th best selling car in the United States in the second quarter of 2019. Switzerland and Liechtenstein (which report sales together) top them both. The Tesla Model 3 was the 4th best selling vehicle in Switzerland and Liechtenstein in the first half of the year.
I may need to cancel my fun, popular, and extremely time consuming monthly reports for US auto sales. One by one, US automakers have stopped publishing monthly sales data. At this point, there are almost as many brands not reporting sales as there are reporting them.
We’re about to close our 2019 EV driver surveys. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to complete one of our surveys. We have unique surveys for people in North America, UK, Germany, France, Norway, the Netherlands, and “other Europe.”
