2018 is going to be another great year for plug-ins: 783,000 units were delivered during H1 2018, a gain of 66 % over the same period last year, according to EV sales database and consultancy EV-Volumes.com.
Preliminary results for July show an increase of 53 % over July 2017. China stands for 51 % of the global volume, so far, and reached a peak share of 4.8 % plug-ins in world’s largest car market.
Battery electric vehicles (BEV) stand for 64 % of the global volume, plug-in hybrids (PHEV) for 36 %. This marks the global average, depending on the individual incentive schemes, the mix of battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids varies significantly between countries. BEVs can represent as much as 88 % of plug-in sales, like in the Netherlands, or just 12 % like in Finland.
The Europe average was 51 % BEV for 2018 H1; in China BEVs stand for 73 %. In USA this number was 53 % until June, now shifting fast towards higher BEV share with more Tesla Model 3 deliveries.
EV-Volumes predicts 2.1 million plug-in deliveries this year, a 64 % increase over the 2017 result. This is considering the regional growth trends and the seasonality of sales, with 60-65 % of deliveries occurring in the second half of the year. The above numbers are for battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids and comprise the light vehicles categories cars, SUVs, MPVs and light commercial vehicles. Medium and heavy commercial vehicles will add another 280 000 sales in 2018, nearly all of them in China.
The global plug-in vehicle population will reach approximately 5.4 million light vehicles by the end of 2018, 64 % more than at the end of 2017. Medium and heavy commercial vehicles add 800,000 units to the global stock of plug-ins.
The by far largest growth contributor is China, where we expect sales to increase by over 500,000 units to 1.1 million in 2018. The long awaited Tesla Model 3 will contribute with over 130,000 additional units this year. With deliveries still restricted to USA and Canada in 2018, the Model 3 already was the world’s best-selling EV of all categories in June, July, much likely in August and in many months to come. It will completely dominate the North American plug-in vehicle market from now on.
Among the fastest growing markets for the first 6 months were China (+105 %), Canada (+168 %), The Netherlands (+126 %), South Korea (+169 %), Spain (+99 %,) Finland (+148 %), Denmark (+691 %), Portugal (+119 %) and Australia (+98 %). Many Central Europe countries have increased sales 3 to 4-fold, albeit from small bases. The share leader is Norway, as usual, where 37 % of new car sales were Plug-ins this year. Iceland comes 2nd with 14 % and Sweden 3rd with 5 % for 2018 H1 combined. Among the larger economies, China leads with a plug-in share of 3 %. All other car markets with over 1 million total sales show 2 % or less for H1 combined.
[source: EV-Volumes]
