The number of electric cars in the world has doubled since this time a year ago, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that electric cars still only account for 0.2% of all the cars in the world. The rest are conventional vehicles that flit along the highways and byways of the world, spewing who knows what out of their tail pipes.
The Chinese market had more than 32,000 new electric cars zooming the streets last month, a 49% increase over the same month last year, with the EV market share up to 1.2%. As the year proceeds and sales expand, expect the market share to rise above last year’s result (1.45%), maybe even reaching north of 2%.
No one can deny that something big is happening to the automotive industry. Companies like Nissan, Ford, Honda, and Zipcar are all entering the electric automotive race to offer sustainable cars that meet consumer demands, government regulations, and stand up to the gas-powered vehicle.
A report by the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisberg-Essen in Germany predicts the market for new cars in China will exceed 30 million vehicles a year by 2025 and it expects EV sales to make up 30% of that figure. In 2016, EV sales in China amounted to 2.1% of sales. While that number is minuscule in the overall scheme of things, it is still double that of other countries. In China, plug-in hybrids and fully electric cars are known as “new energy vehicles.” The CAR report counts both types in its EV sales calculation, according to Forbes.
The Chinese market had more than 32,000 new electric cars zooming the streets last month, an 89% increase over the same month last year, with the annual growth rate now at 31%. The EV market share is firmly above the 1% barrier, at around 1.4%. As the year proceeds and sales expand, expect market share to rise above last year’s result (1.45%), maybe reaching north of 2% share, something the US is yet to do.
The Chinese market had more than 16,000 new EVs zooming the streets last month, a 55% increase over the same month last year, so it looks like the January standstill is a thing of the past and we are back at business as usual in China’s EV market.
We wrote a couple of weeks ago about China’s dramatic electric bus growth, but the numbers we had at the time only covered fully electric buses. We now have numbers for plug-in hybrids as well, again thanks to Jose Pontes and his helpful EV sales obsession.
In January, SAIC and BAIC took over the top positions. Tesla also moved up, benefitting from the local sales drought to post a best ever #5 position. Here are last month’s top 5 best selling EV models…
EV Volumes has just released its global plug-in car sales report for 2016. There are several exciting findings in the report, including a few that we’ve highlighted in recent weeks, but the most striking news for me was that the Tesla Model S clocked in as the best-selling electric car in the world in 2016.
The Chinese market had 44,874 new electric cars in December, far from the 60,000 expected by analysts, but still up 27% year over year (YoY). That pulled the plug-in market share to a record 1.45%, above the USA (0.8%) and Europe (1.3%).
