In this blog: February shows steady EV sales in Europe, 4,878 sold – 38% more than the last year.It's a positive trend, though not a record one, and we can't be sure these numbers are absolutely correct...
The data must be coming from official sources, which means some dealer sales may not be included. Otherwise, the new kid on the block is BMW i3 – the bavarian EV takes the second spot, with Tesla Model S in fourth. In it's also fourth, but year on the market, Nissan LEAF leads with 870 sales, so having 645 new owners the carbon-fiber BMW i3 is not far behind despite it may cost up to €20k more then LEAF.
We'd prefer a separate list for the plugin hybrids, and pure EVs can already have their own as well. Cars like Opel Ampera/Chevy Volt are in between, but people drive them mostly in the EV mode. Currently, though, Ampera, resides at the bottom end of the table...
Here's February European EV sales results:
| Electric vehicles sales Europe – February 2014 | |||||
| # | Make/Model | February 2014 | YTD | % | # in 2013 |
| 2 | Nissan LEAF | 870 | 2131 | 24 | 1 |
| 2 | BMW i3 | 645 | 1050 | 12 | |
| 3 | Mitsubishi Outlander плъгин | 633 | 833 | 9 | 3 |
| 4 | Tesla Model S | 601 | 859 | 10 | 7 |
| 5 | Volvo V60 плъгин | 560 | 958 | 11 | 4 |
| 6 | Renault ZOE | 337 | 600 | 7 | 2 |
| 7 | Volkswagen e-Up! | 301 | 668 | 7 | 11 |
| 8 | Renault Kangoo ZE | 268 | 450 | 5 | 5 |
| 9 | Smart Fortwo ED | 144 | 311 | 3 | 9 |
| 10 | Renault Twizy | 79 | 185 | 2 | 10 |
| 11 | Mitsubishi i-MiEV | 76 | 128 | 1 | 14 |
| 12 | Toyota Prius плъгин | 65 | 143 | 2 | 6 |
| 13 | Goupil G3 | 48 | 79 | 1 | 18 |
| 14 | Peugeot iOn | 46 | 76 | 1 | 17 |
| 15 | Citroen C-ZERO | 42 | 72 | 1 | 15 |
| 16 | Porsche Panamera плъгин | 39 | 95 | 1 | 21 |
| 17 | Opel Ampera | 32 | 82 | 1 | 8 |
| 18 | Peugeot Partner EV | 30 | 61 | 1 | 22 |
| 19 | Citroen Berlingo EV | 21 | 39 | 0 | 26 |
| 20 | Renault Fluence ZE | 10 | 15 | 0 | 19 |
BMW i3's sales are a clear indication that brand matters. With an average price of €50k, i3 is far from cheap, which seems to have little impact on the sales looking at the impressive score above. There's another player coming also, however – it will be very interesting to see how the new Volkswagen e-Golf performs at €34,900 base price this summer.
With 24% market share Nissan is taking the first spot among the brands as well, with Renault now second (14%) and BMW third (12%).
And some more stats, this time from around the world – according to Zentrums fuer Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW), globally there's more than 400,000 EVs on the streets at the beginning of 2014.
This includes PHEVs and EREVs, and EV registrations increased by more than 100% annually in the last three years. In other words, from around 100,000 early 2012, an year later we've had close to 200,000 and now up to 405,000.
Keeping this trend, in the beginning of 2016 we should be driving more than million EVs, part of which in Bulgaria. Right now we're still very short on EVs, but from just 1 Tesla Model S at the end of December, we already have 6 and more are coming.
The real deal will be to have more mainstream EVs on our streets though. Cars like Nissan LEAF, Renault ZOE and VW e-Golf. Charging infstastructure development is also an important factor (not if you listen to BMW probably). With 15 new charging stations in Plovdiv coming soon, there is at least some development.
We're sure this year there will be more charging stations and EV sales in Bulgaria and we hope there will be reasons to put together some BG EV stats at eCars.bg soon.
Source: ev-sales.blogspot.de, Green Car Congress
