Electric Cars = 23% of New Zealand Auto Market, Tesla = 12%

New Zealand has gotten the electric car fever, and August showed that more than ever before. Last month, 23% of new auto sales were sales of fully electric cars. (Adding in hybrids would bring the total share of “green(er)” vehicles to 44%.)

Interestingly, the electric vehicle market was dominated by two brands. Tesla and BYD accounted for 70% of the pure EV market. Taking that together, as you can imagine, Tesla and BYD had sizable shares of the overall auto market in August. Tesla accounted for 12% of the market while BYD accounted for 4%.

Overall, 10,940 new vehicles were sold in New Zealand in August, 2,577 of which were full electrics, 1,326 of which were Teslas, and 448 of which were BYD Atto 3s.

It may be a small market, but the EV revolution is clearly well underway in New Zealand.

Also, unlike the European or US auto market, where overall sales have been shrinking, New Zealand’s market just jumped to record levels. So, one cannot say that the high EV market share is mostly due to supply chain issues, lack of supply, and thus low overall sales.