Global Sales December & 2018: 2 Million Plug-In Electric Cars Sold

By: Mark Kane

Jan 31, 2019 at 8:59am ET

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Amazing year, amazing growth and records

Sales of plug-in electric cars increased very fast and in December reached an all-time record of around 286,367 (according to EV Sales Blog estimations), which is the fourth consecutive new record.

The rate of growth was 70%, which is enough to be happy with the progress.

See more our sales reports for December 2018 here.

Thanks to the superb end of the year, the year 2018 closed with 2 million sales! The estimated result stands at 2,018,247, which is 72% more than a year ago at an average market share of 2.1%.

All-electric cars took 69% of sales, while PHEV 31%. Such high advantage for BEVs has not been seen since 2011.

Next year result is expected at 3-3.5 million with a monthly record maybe at around 500,000.

Global Plug-In Electric Car Sales - December 2018

Models rank

The indisputable market leader in 2018 was Tesla Model 3 with an all-time record of 25,050 in December and an all-time record of 145,846 in 2018. No other all-electric (or plug-in hybrid) model was ever even close to Model 3 results.

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All the people engaged in Tesla Model 3 (and broadly in Tesla) should hear a big thank you from all of us, EV enthusiasts, for what they have done, showing the way for the entire automotive industry. Good luck and hopefully 300,000 sales in 2019!

The next two places were taken by Chinese BAIC EC-Series (90,637) and Nissan LEAF (87,149) - both set new own records. For LEAF it was first new record since the good old times - 2014 when 61,013 were sold. Perspectives for growth at EC-Series and LEAF/LEAF e+ are good in 2019.

Tesla Model S (50,045) and Tesla Model X (49,349) complemented the all-electric Top 5 making Tesla the brand with 3 models in Top 5!

BYD put the most - five - models in the Top 20, which consist of 3 models from the U.S., 3 from Europe and 3 from Japan (the remaining 11 are from China).

Hopefully, in 2019 more models will be selling at a rate of more than 10,000 per month.

Manufacturers rank

The race between manufacturers of plug-in electric car sales was won by Tesla, ahead of BYD, which is the only company able to keep a similar pace of growth. It's the first such title for Tesla, especially important because Tesla sells only all-electric cars and offers only three models.

BYD is still the biggest EV manufacturer when we include buses and trucks - 247,811, but this is rather a curiosity than an important comparison.

Strong six-digit results were achieved also by BAIC and BMW, while Nissan missed the mark of 100,000 by some 3,000.