April EV Sales Results - More Range Equals More Sales

The numbers are in and they show EV sales were up sharply in April, thanks in large part to two electric cars that boast longer range — the BMW i3 and the Renualt Zoe. The i3 now comes with a 33 kWh battery, which is 50% larger than it debuted with a few years ago. Range is now listed at 114 miles as compared to 82 miles for the original. Buyers have responded. Twice as many i3 sedan found new homes in April of this year as did a year ago.

In France, the Renault Zoe, which is a close cousin to the Nissan LEAF, also has a new battery with longer range. Except in base trim, the car now sports a 41 kWh battery and an estimated range of 186 miles in the European testing cycle. That has propelled the Zoe to the top of the sales charts in France and made it a strong seller in many other European countries.

The proof that battery technology is evolving at a rapid pace is that both the new BMW battery and the new Renault battery (sourced from LG Chem) fit in the same space as the smaller batteries the cars came with initially.

BMW is ecstatic about the surge in i3 and i8 sales. “We are therefore well on course to delivering more than 100,000 electrified vehicles for the first time in 2017,” says Harald Kreuger, chairman of the board at BMW. Sales of electrified cars accounted for 3% of BMW’s global business in April.

Sharp eyed readers will notice the chart shown above does not mention Tesla. That is because Tesla does not report sales monthly as the rest of the industry does, nor does it break out sales information by country. Instead it reports global sales on a quarterly basis. For the first quarter of 2017, it said it delivered 25,000 cars — 13,540 Model S sedans and 11,550 Model X SUVs, making it one of the global leaders in electric car sales.

Source and chart credit: CleanTechnica via EV Obsession

SUV Sales Soar, EV Sales Slump In China

SUV sales are soaring in America, but they are going strong in other parts of the world as well. On the other hand, sales of electrified cars in China are disappointing. That’s largely because they are all sedans, a vehicle style that Chinese customers are turning away from. China is pushing hard to make electric cars mainstream. In China’s crowded cities, it is impossible to register a car without first proving there is a space available to park it. Then and only then does the registration process begin.

EVs have first priority. People who buy conventional cars have to enter a lottery to get a registration, a process that can take up to 5 years. Imagine buying a  conventional car today, then making payments and paying taxes and insurance on it until 2022 before you could drive it. Despite generous cash subsidies to encourage people to buy so called “new energy” vehicles, SUV sales in China have surged 21% to 2.4 million units in the first quarter of 2017 while EV sales have increased a barely noticeable 4% to 55,929 during the same period.

“It’s tough for someone with an EV to come and take away market share from SUVs,” said Ben Cavender of China Market Research Group. Chinese drivers say they are wary of the unfamiliar technology’s reliability and cost. In other words, they are just like American consumers who are skeptical of electric and plug-in hybrid cars. The Sierra Club says US manufacturers and dealers have done a poor job of explaining the technology and the benefits of driving on electrons rather than molecules.

The new car market in China is the largest in the world, but has shown signs of slowing down lately. Sales were up 15% in 2016 but are only projected to grow by 1.7% this year based on the numbers from the first quarter. In total, SUV sales now account for 40% of the market while sedans sales slipped 5% from the same quarter last year.

At the Shanghai show, the industry’s biggest marketing event in China each year, every global and Chinese brand plans to display at least one electric concept car alongside its latest SUVs and sedans. GM will have the Buick Velite — a restyled Chevy Volt — on its stand. Buick also sells a hybrid LaCrosse in China, a car that is largely based on the Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid.

Volkswagen will announce its electric vehicle plans for China and unveil an electric concept car. Honda will showcase its NeuV, a futuristic concept car the company hints might get an electric drivetrain. BYD sells all electric vehicles to taxi and bus fleets in China and abroad and hybrid SUVs and sedans to Chinese consumers. Last year, BYD sales in China totaled 100,183 vehicles, helped in large part by the popularity of its Tang plug-in hybrid SUV. Tesla was second in the China market with 76,230 vehicles sold.

It’s hard to understand why the SUV craze and the plug-in hybrid/electric car push haven’t merged yet. Somehow, almost all the world’s manufacturers have been caught flat footed by the extraordinary demand for SUVs. With the exception of the BYD Tang, there are precious few SUVs with electric motors available anywhere, although several like the Jaguar I-Pace are coming in a few years. Maybe when shoppers have a choice of affordable electric SUVs, the switchover to electric cars will finally begin. Maybe.

Source: Yahoo Finance

EV Sales Surging In 2017. Here Are The Winners And Losers

EV sales in the US are showing impressive gains compared to last year, with plug-in hybrids leading the way. Overall, sales of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric cars are up nearly 20% so far this year. That number needs some explanation. Sales of hybrids have fallen off a cliff lately. Toyota Prius, Prius V, and Prius C deliveries are down about 25%. The same malaise is affecting Lexus models that feature Toyota’s patented Synergy Drive technology.

On the other hand, demand for the newly introduced Honda Accord Hybrid is red hot. Go figure. Maybe people just want hybrids that are larger than the compact Prius. Plug-in hybrid sales are what is driving the green car market forward. Through the first quarter of the year, they rose 23 percent to 109,292 vehicles. Plug-in vehicle sales have jumped 65 percent to more than 37,500 units. The new Prius Prime plug-in hybrid is enjoying strong sales.

Over at Ford, where CEO Mark Fields says no one wants to buy electric cars, green car sales jumped 61 percent from a year earlier to 9,212 units. Fusion Hybrid sales almost tripled to 5,865 units, while sales of the Focus Electric with its newly introduced larger battery quadrupled to 407 units.

General Motors’ green car sales grew even faster at a 67 percent increase from a year earlier. Chevrolet Bolt sales hit 978 units, which was up slightly from the 952 sold in February, though short of the monthly record 1,162 sold in January. The Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid sold 2,123 cars, up 14 percent from a year earlier.

Honda and BMW both experienced green car gains last month. Honda’s sales amounted to 2,040 cars — up five times from last year. That was due almost entirely to strong demand for the revised Accord Hybrid. Sales of BMW’s i-branded plug-in vehicles rose 79 percent to 752 units, with i3 EV sales doubling from a year earlier to 703 units. The Nissan LEAF. with its larger battery and longer range. saw sales rise 19 percent from a year earlier to 1,478 units. And VW’s green car sales more than doubled to 351 units, as e-Golf demand almost quadrupled from a year earlier.

The winners and losers are all laid out in this chart prepared by Autoblog.

Good News, Bad News For EV Sales In First Half Of 2016

The numbers are in for EV sales in the US through the first half of 2016. Tesla leads the pack by a wide margin, especially if sales of the Model S and Model X are lumped together. Combined they accounted for about 19,000 new sales. The Chevy Volt, which costs less than half as much, was in second place at just under 10,000 sold. The Ford Fusion Energi made a strong showing, finishing in third place, just barely ahead of the Model X.

Sales of the Nissan LEAF continue to be dismal. We have some LEAF owners among our regular readers here at Gas2 and they report they are reasonably happy with their cars. But the industry has moved on while the LEAF has changed since it went on sale in 2010. It is desperately in need of greater range and styling refresh. What might have been trendy at one time now is simply dated.

BMW has two cars in the top 10 list, but that is a testament to how poorly some other cars with plugs sell. Sales of the i3 fell to just over 2,800 units. The BMW X5 PHEV is not far behind and it only went on sale this year. BMW must be deeply disappointed that all the creative energy it put into the i3 has largely gone to waste, except as it gets used to enhance the capabilities of more traditional models. The 3 series, 7 Series and X5 all have plug-in options available.

Soon, every car in the BMW line-up will offer plug-in capability, including the cars in the MINI sub-brand. The i3 also pioneered advances in carbon fiber technology. That so called lightweighting is now trickling down to other BMW models like the 7 Series sedan.

Why are cars that cost so much like the Tesla Model S and Model X outselling far less expensive cars? There is no clear answer to that question, but Tesla’s Supercharger network has to be a big part of the answer. Then there is the “cool” factor involved with driving a Tesla.

The lesson is that people will buy electric cars, but only if they are “compelling” vehicles, in the words of Elon Musk. With 400,00 reservations for the Model 3 in hand before production even begins, people clearly find the offerings from Tesla to be compelling, despite their relatively high initial cost.

Source and image credit: Inside EVs

Car Dealers Biggest Barrier To EV Sales

A new study by Eric Cahill for the Institute of  Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis says the biggest reason there EV sales aren’t higher is that traditional car dealers don’t want to sell them. Margins on the cars are razor thin, so there is little direct profit to be made. To make matters worse, EVs need less routine maintenance and fewer repairs. Some dealers survive on the money their service and parts departments earn, according to the New York Times.

Most dealers try to sell their EVs the same way they would a Corolla or a Civic. They don’t want to be bothered educating the customer about electric or plug-in hybrids. They are there to sell cars, not give seminars. Salesmen see EV customers as a waste of their time. A good salesman can sell three cars in the time it takes to sell one EV.

So many questions! How do I charge my car? Where are there chargers in the area? What is regenerative braking? Why do I get less range in winter? What does “pre-conditioning” mean? What sort of wall charger should I get for my home? How much does it cost to charge this car? How long does charging take? How long will the battery last? A conventional car buyer doesn’t need to ask all those questions. They only need to pick a color and a few options and then its straight on into the finance office for a few signatures before driving off the lot in that new jewel.

Some EV shoppers report that dealerships are doing such a poor job of training their sales staff, the customers often know more about the cars than the salespeople do. Others say they have felt pressured to buy a conventional car instead of an EV. Clearly, if the electric car revolution is every going to happen, dealers will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Eric Cahill calls car dealers a “bottleneck” on the way to greater EV sales.

Tesla and Elon Musk should use this information when they try to get individual states to pass laws that allow direct sales to customers, bypassing traditional dealers. Despite all the protestations from dealer groups about how valuable the franchise dealer model is, the truth is that franchise laws do nothing but protect the financial interests of a small group of business owners. They preserve a process that is the antithesis of the free market that all Americans say they favor.

Regulators can force manufacturers to build cars that get better fuel economy or pollute less, but no regulations can force car dealers to sell them. Until that conundrum gets resolved, the promise of a fossil fuel free future will continue to be delayed.