The European electric vehicle (EV) market is continuing to see strong growth, based on registrations during March — with roughly 18,000 units registered, blowing past the old monthly record (set in December 2013) for the old continent. The old record was 14,197 units registered.
As it stands, more than 36,000 EVs have been registered in the European market this year — putting the market (if things continue this way) roughly on track to top 150,000 units in 2015.
Note that these numbers are not perfect. They don’t actually cover all European countries, and they include a lot of estimates, but much of the data is very usefully gathered (or estimated) through the painstaking work of José Pontes, and it helps to show what the European EV market looks like — quite different from the US market.
The market during March was dominated by the Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-In, which saw 4,306 units sold. This is a vehicle that still isn’t even on the US market.
The Nissan LEAF saw good continuing sales as well, with 3,300 units sold — which is, more or less, a record with regards to units sold in a single month (in the European market) for a purely electric vehicle.
The Tesla Model S continued to do well, as well — with a personal record of 2,584 units sold (registered) in March. And the Renault Zoe and Volkswagen e-Golf followed behind with good sales as well — with 1,343 and 1,104 units sold, respectively.
Altogether, the rise of the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S was notable — each managing to gain market share and rise in the rankings, the LEAF up to the #2 spot, and the Model S up to #3.
The year-to-date numbers (again, from the EV Sales blog) tell a similar story, with the first three positions being identical. Additionally, the BMW i3 managed to rise to the #6 position, and the Audi A3 e-Tron to #8.
Interestingly, the Nissan e-NV200/Evalia actually rose 6 spots, to take the #11 position — seeing more than half of its year-to-date sales in just one month (March).
