Volvo XC90 T8 Is #1 Electric Car In Netherlands, Mercedes C350e #1 In July
Originally published on EV Obsession.
Plug-in electric sales in the Netherlands during July 2016 were down year over year by around 65% (as compared to July 2015), going by the most recent estimates from the EV Sales blog.
Altogether, only 774 plug-in vehicles were sold during the month in the Netherlands, according to the estimates.
The share of the country’s total automotive market that’s now held by plug-in electric vehicles is now right around 2.38% — considerably below the 9.6% market share that plug-in electric vehicles held in 2015.
That rather high market share was mostly down to the impending expiration of good incentives for plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) at the end of 2015 — so the drop shouldn’t be seen as an unexplained misfortune, but rather the result of policy changes.
In stark contrast to our earlier coverage of July 2016 electric car sales in France, the top 5 rankings for plug-in sales in the Netherlands were held entirely by PHEVs rather than by fully electric cars.
The top seller for July was the Mercedes C350e (128 units registered), a car that hasn’t even hit the US market yet. In 2nd place was the Volvo XC90 T8 (123 units registered), a niche EV that is just seeing a trickle of sales in the US — slightly more than in the much-smaller Netherlands. In 3rd was the BMW 330e (109 units registered), which is again hardly a footnote in the US market (despite how BMW is portraying it). In 4th was the Volkswagen Passat GTE (99 units registered), another vehicle that hasn’t arrived in the US yet. And in 5th was the Audi Q7 e-Tron (61 units registered), yet another car not on the US market.
Jose Pontes provides more (on the year-to-date rankings): “In the YTD ranking, there were a number of significant changes, the most important of all being the recovery of the YTD Best Seller Throne by the Volvo XC90 T8, but with only 26 units separating it from the Tesla Model S, the dispute for #1 is far from over. … In an atypical year due to more stringent fiscal incentives, there are models that still excel in the general auto market: The Volvo XC90 T8 represents 85% of the total sales of that model and if considered individually, it would lead the luxury SUV class. Another impressive stat from Volvo is that 16% of all its sales in this market had a plug. Not bad, eh?”
A couple of other things worth taking note of — the Tesla Model S is still leading its class, with 915 units sold so far this year; well ahead of the BMW 5-Series (832 units sold so far this year), the Audi A6 (561 units), and the Mercedes E-Class (445 units).
As far as plug-in manufacturer rankings, BMW is still holding first (with a roughly 22% market share), followed by Volvo (with a 19% market share), and Tesla (with a 17% market share).
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