Last year, the drivers around the world bought around 9.6 million pure electric light vehicles. This figure, which excludes plug-in hybrids (PHEV) and extended-range electric vehicles (EREV), as well as fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEV), indicates that the demand increased by 30% compared to 2022. Not bad, considering the challenging times that the global industry went through.
The growth was driven by China and its increasing incentives to its NEV industry (New Energy Vehicle), and more demand in Europe, USA, Korea, and some emerging markets like Thailand, India, and some Latin American nations. Nevertheless, China still counted for more than half of the global demand.
Despite the reluctance in some key markets to shift from ICE to BEV, and the high prices of these cars, they are slowly emerging as a valid choice. Still, it is clear that the BEV adoption is going at two different speeds: the Chinese one, where it is almost becoming mandatory to buy and drive electric (due to the difficulties you have to deal with when trying to buy a gasoline car); and the non-Chinese one, where the doubts around the feasibility of becoming 100% electric are growing every day.
Tesla, and not BYD, is the world’s leader
As anticipated back in January in a clarifying post, it was Tesla and not BYD the world’s top-selling BEV maker. The American brand delivered almost 1.81 million electric vehicles globally to a total market share of 18.9%. Remarkably, Tesla was able to increase its global market share by more than one percentage point compared to 2022, when it controlled 17.8% of the market. The absolute success of the Model Y in every market where it is introduced explains this very good results.
BYD came second but advanced faster. The Chinese brand sold 1.57 million electric vehicles, up by 80% vs 2022! In addition to a strong demand at home, BYD also expaned to other markets like Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Central Asia in 2023. It arrived to Europe with a good start thanks to the Atto 3 (aka Yuan Plus). In China, BYD is now extremely popular thanks to models like the Han (you can see it everywhere in Beijing and Shanghai), the Song, and Qin. BYD brand’s market share within the BEV global market soared from 11.9% in 2022 to 16.4% in 2023.
The third largest BEV car group was Volkswagen with 769,000 units, or almost half the size of BYD. In this case, the market share growth was moderated as it jumped from 7.9% in 2022 to 8.0% in 2023. While the ID models from the Volkswagen brand kind of struggled in China and USA, and somehow in Europe (ID.3), Audi did good with some of the e-tron models, but still was quite behind its rivals from Mercedes and BMW. Although China represented 52% of the global BEV sales last year, the sales of VW Group’s BEVs in this country made up just 23% of its global BEV sales.
Two more Chinese makers close the top 5
As expected, the fourth and fifth positions were occupied by Chinese OEMs. Geely group followed Volkswagen with 526,000 pure electric vehicles sold in 2023. The volume increased by 37% mainly because of ZEEKR (+65%), and Volvo (+70%). Geely is by far the Chinese maker with the highest BEV sales outside China, mainly because of Volvo and Polestar.
GAC completed the top 5 thanks to the big popularity of the AION models, particularly the AION Y. This group sold 486,000 new electric vehicles last year, up by 64%. With the introduction of Hyper brand, GAC wants to expand its presence in the high-end BEV world and go directly against Tesla.
BMW ahead of Stellantis
When it is about electric car sales, BMW Group, the world’s 13th maker by unit sales, is ahead of Stellantis, the world’s fourth largest. BMW, Mini, and Rolls-Royce combined sold almost 376,000 electric vehicles in 2023 against 323,300 units sold by Stellantis and the six brands that offered a BEV last year. This is a remarkable fact considering the high prices of the electric BMWs and the big presence of Stellantis in Europe and the Americas. The BEVs made up 15% of BMW Group’s global sales vs 5.2% at Stellantis.
The group from Munich was quite ahead of its rival Mercedes, as the former sold 60,000 BEVs more than the latter. Mercedes EQ lineup and Smart cars found 315,300 units in 2023, up by 95% compared to 2022. Mercedes-Benz group was the 10th largest BEV maker last year.
Fiat Group World 