Top Electric Car Companies By EV Battery Sales (H1 2015)

The electric vehicle battery market remained more or less recognizable during June 2016. The most recent figures from Jose Pontes show that Tesla/Panasonic has maintained a huge lead in the #1 spot, as one would expect; that BYD has maintained a comfortable 2nd place position; and that Nissan is holding on to 3rd place with a big margin.

To clarify some things here (for those who have forgotten how these rankings are compiled), what’s taken into account here is total delivered battery-pack capacity. In other words, the larger the battery packs used (I’m looking at you, Tesla), the higher the manufacturer would rank if sales of all electric models were equivalent.

As mentioned above, the Tesla/Panasonic partnership holds a substantial lead. Though, BYD would probably take first by a fair margin if we were including electric bus batteries as well (which we can’t because of a lack of reliable figures).

It should be noted here, though, that the Tesla figures are an estimate based on an average battery-pack size of 85 kilowatt-hours (kWh) — as there aren’t figures detailing the sales split between the various battery-pack size options.

Also worth noting is that BYD’s figures “went down slightly … because Denza battery figures were removed.”

Jose provides more info: “Finally, outside this top 5, the remaining best-selling brands are Volkswagen (Panasonic), hindered by a PHEV-heavy (62%) lineup, adding just 263 MWh to the market; Mitsubishi (GS Yuasa), which suffers from the same syndrome, with 236 MWh. On the LG Chem side, Renault is the best representative, being #6 in the ranking with 314 MWh, thanks mostly to the success of the Zoe. Chevrolet has a rather low result of 221 MWh, surely to be greatly improved with the Bolt.”

Continuing: “The #10 Best Selling EV brand, Ford, shows some really paltry results, contributing only 68 MWh to LG (Fusion Energi and Focus Electric) and 28 MWh to Panasonic (C-Max Energi), to a grand total of … 96 MWh, or almost one tenth of Nissan. That’s what you get when you only have 7.6 kWh PHEVs and a compliance BEV.”

Indeed. Putting the market in these terms better highlights who is really leading the transition to battery-electric cars.