Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, and the world’s 2nd largest plugin market after China, saw plugin electric vehicle share of 21.6% in January, almost flat year-on-year. Full electric vehicle sales grew a relative 28% year-on-year, plugin hybrids shrank slightly, and the overall auto market grew to 184,112 units. January plugin registrations saw a hangover after December’s end-of-year emissions compliance push.
Conversely, there’s also motivation for auto makers who are close to their emission limits, to hold back sales of highly emitting petrol-only and diesel-only powertrains in December. These vehicles then experience a rebound in January. This was a smaller effect, mainly applying to Diesels, but added to the downward pressure on plugin share.
Other recently popular BEVs were also far below their typical volumes in January — not due to logistics — but due to the emissions game discussed in the previous section. These include, most notably, the Renault Zoe and the Volkswagen e-Up!, both down toOther models suffering a dramatic volume cut in January include many of the recent big names; the Dacia Spring, Renault Twingo, Skoda Enyaq, BMW i3, Nissan Leaf, Smart Fortwo.