A few weeks ago, the EV folks on social media joined together to sing the scorn of a German engineering firm’s “Hyper Hybrid” — a modified Tesla with a reduced battery pack and a small range extender under the hood instead of a frunk. “Why fix what isn’t broken?” some asked. The general consensus was that battery EVs are the answer, while plug-in hybrids are a step backward. It’s not that simple, though.
The European plug-in electric vehicle market registered a record 77,000 vehicles in December (+88%!), with the Dutch market most helping to pull the market up. Fully electric vehicles (+91% year over year) grew a bit faster than plug-in hybrids (+81%), with the powertrain breakdown becoming even more friendly to fully electric vehicles (68% to 32% in December, versus 64% to 36% in 2019).
Almost a year ago, I wrote an article about the first 40,000 miles in my Nissan LEAF. Fortunately, I continue to drive this car a lot, and can give you an idea of what to expect.
Uber is getting a partner to help it electrify its fleet in the London area, and Nissan is getting a partner to buy a bunch of Nissan LEAFs.
It’s hard to put into perspective just how many sales the Tesla Model 3 inspires worldwide. It’s sometimes hard to convey convincingly why Tesla is highlighted or mentioned on so many CleanTechnica pages. But there’s one general point everyone should understand by now: the Tesla Model 3 is in a league of its own.
The German plug-in electric passenger vehicle market ended the year on fire, with registrations more than doubling in December, to 11,328 registrations.
The Netherlands got most of the press from EV fans in recent weeks and months thanks to a stunning 54% plug-in vehicle (PEV) market share at the end of 2019 and the Tesla Model 3 bagging approximately twice as many 2019 sales as the #2 Volkswagen Polo.
Far and away, the Swiss plug-in vehicle (PEV) leader was the Model 3, which had 29% of PEV market share. That means it had ~1.6% of the overall auto market in Switzerland all by itself, and it put the Model 3 at #4 in the overall auto market in the country, only trailing the Skoda Octavia, Volkswagen Tiguan, and Volkswagen Golf.
The French plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) market registered a record 7,250 units in December, +28% year over year (YoY), a new all time record. That was thanks to leader Renault Zoe (2,097 units, a new year best), which seems to be past the worse of the production ramp up, and the Tesla Model 3, which moved 1,250 units, its best result ever in France. Additionally, plug-in hybrid (PHEV) sales more than doubled YoY, helping to set the record score.
While the Tesla Model 3 was the 9th best selling car in the country and had more than 150,000 sales in the USA, the next best selling non-Tesla on the market was the Chevy Bolt with 16,418 sales, followed by the Nissan LEAF with 12,365 sales.
