Rho Motion analysts found that the growth in sales of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in Europe and the US allowed these regions to overtake China, which remains the largest market, in January for the first time since February last year. Overall, global sales of such vehicles in January increased by 18% year-on-year to 1.26 million units.
In China, the negative sales dynamics in a sequential comparison were caused by the traditional New Year holidays, as a result of which the sales volumes of vehicles with traction electric motors in the country decreased by 43% compared to December. However, if compared with January of the previous year, the sales volumes in China increased by 11.8% to 700 thousand units.
In Europe, year-on-year growth reached 21%, with 250,000 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids sold in the region in January. The introduction of a tax on plug-in hybrids in France caused sales to fall by 52%, while Germany grew by 40% year-on-year, as January last year saw a sharp decline in electric vehicle sales due to the removal of government subsidies for their purchase.
On a global scale, as Rho Motion representatives explain, sales volumes of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids have been declining for the third month in a row. In the US and Canada, sales volumes grew by 22.1% to 130,000 units, but it is obvious that the local market is inferior in capacity not only to China, but also to Europe. By the way, in the rest of the world, sales volumes of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids grew by 50% in January, but the capacity of this geographic segment is comparable to the North American one. In a sequential comparison, sales volumes of cars with the specified types of power plants decreased by 35%, the Chinese market had a decisive influence on the overall statistics due to the holidays.