In December 2022, we just saw one of the greatest months in the electric revolution history. Not many people even seem to notice. The mainstream media couldn’t care less. But the truth is, disruption has never, ever been happening faster when it comes to electric vehicles displacing gasoline. And it was frankly a fantastic Christmas present, which we all didn’t even realize we received.
In December of last year, plug-in car sales reached a new record, which was truly spectacular. December was an incredible month in Europe. Not just in Europe, but also in many places around the world. Let’s have a look at Europe. Let’s have a look at what happened because frankly, it was amazing. According to EV volumes data, 413,463 plug-in passenger car vehicles were registered in Europe. That’s an increase of 46% year over year. If we continue to see these kinds of increases, well, this revolution won’t have long to go, 38% of the market in December were plugins, the majority of those fully electric. The previous record was set in November at 282,000. So as you can see, massive, massive increase from November to December. All electric car registrations were incredible, 275,277. That’s 51% more than the previous 12 months. We’re looking at a 51% increase in electric vehicle sales in December of last year versus December of the previous year. 25% of the entire market was fully electric. I’ve received a few emails lately from people telling me, I’m wrong about EVs. They won’t be massively adopted by the market. Renewable energy won’t be either. It’s all going to fail. Give up now. Just stop talking about it, because frankly, you’re wrong. Yeah, how about you look at the data, my friends? The data shows that EVs are doing it. Renewable energy is doing it. They’re on track to completely takeover within the next few years.
Plug-in hybrids are at 138,000 sales. But that’s the end for plug-in hybrids. Sorry if you bought one, well it’s still better than a gasoline-powered vehicle. But when I say that’s the end, what I mean is, the incentives for these are being phased out. In Germany, for example, incentives pretty much ended at the end of last year, so plugin hybrid sales will definitely decrease this year. Fully electric cars are up 51% year-over-year, 25% market share. Plug-in hybrids are up 40% year over year with a 13% market share. So, as you can see for electric cars, have nearly twice as many sales as plug-in hybrids. And that’s a good thing considering the study I just saw within the last ten minutes showing that plug-in hybrids are polluting far more than advertised, that’s even when they’re running in electric mode. I have a video coming out that’s quite shocking. In 2022, inside EV says that more than 2.6 million new passenger plug-in electric cars were registered in Europe. That’s 23% of the total volume of the automotive industry. That was compared to 19% one year earlier and 11% two years ago. However, fully electric vehicle sales went from 10% to 14%. Plug-in hybrids stayed at 9%. Plug-in hybrid growth didn’t increase at all last year, while electric cars were from nine to 14%. So fully electric car sales in Europe in 2022 were 14% or 1.6 million vehicles. So what were the top models? Well, of course, Tesla took the cake.
Model Y came in first place with a monthly record of 32,442 sales. Model 3 came in second place with 20,335 sales. However, that did mean it was down 23% of course, Model Y has disrupted the 3 to some degree. The next two popular models were way down the charts; The ID 4 had 13,685 deliveries. ID 3, which has just gone up in price, so we might see sales for that decline a little bit had 11,561 deliveries for the Cougar plug-in hybrid, not really relevant in my opinion, considering plugin hybrid incentives just went out the door.10,726 Dacia Spring were sold. That’s one of the cheapest EVs in Europe, 9694, Fiat 500 electric 8333. By the way, if you’re in Australia. Fiat 500 Electric coming this year, but they’ll be priced at $55,000. So forget about that, you’d be better off getting something else. That’s my point. Renault Megane E-tech Electri, 8084 sales. Then you got the Volvo XC40 recharge 7700, and the Cupra Born with 7490, by far the best-selling electric car in Europe. It sold twice as many vehicles as the next closest manufacturer, which was Volkswagen. What was the Model Y sales for the entirety of 2022 in Europe? Model Y, 138,373, which was more than twice as many sales as the Volkswagen ID 4.
Now, there are a lot of people that are in denial about this, believing that Volkswagen is actually crushing Tesla because they’re getting a little bit misled. They’re seeing Volkswagen Groups plugin car sales, and unfortunately, the electric vehicle community is repeating these numbers they’re seeing, but they’re including plug-in hybrids, which, as you can see, market share is staying flat, and it’s about to go down. I mean, they had incentives now for years. Those incentives are being phased out, and more and more electric cars are being sold and more and more are coming to the market and being available. And that is really eating into plugin hybrid sales. So I think you’re going to see Volkswagen Group have it kind of disrupt their own products here because they’re going to have to be replacing these plugin hybrids with EVs. And I think that means we’re going to see more accurate figures, more accurate reporting this year, rather than seeing these numbers where they say Stellantis is beating Tesla in Europe according to EV sales, which is not true, but people are repeating this kind of stuff all over the place.
People are believing this stuff. They’re reading it in the comments. They’re seeing this in articles, seeing this so-called automotive group selling this many millions of EVs, but they’re not EVs. The majority of those cars are often just plug-in hybrids; very, very misleading. So clearly the important data here is not how many plugins you sold, it’s how many electric cars you sold. Because what kind of vehicle is the vehicle of the future? Is it a plugin hybrid? I don’t think so. That’s a vehicle that’s extremely complex, and extremely heavy, lugging around two different transmissions, lugging around two different forms of propulsion.
I really don’t think that’s the solution. Some people do, but I believe it’s not. I wouldn’t be buying one. Now, some of you have been emailing me asking, if should I buy a plug-in hybrid. My answer unequivocally is no, you should not. The reason being, well, if you’re going to own it for one year and then to sell it on and that’s your strategy, yeah, that might work, you might be okay. But if you’re going to hold onto a car for say, four or five years, good luck selling that car in four or five years. I’m sure you’d have to sell it, but maybe for 60% to 70% discount on what you bought today. I don’t want that to happen to you. So that’s why I say I wouldn’t be doing it.
Second place, model 3. sales for the Model 3 crashed, actually, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, depending on how you look at it. Still, it was in 2nd place, with 91,257 deliveries in Europe. However, model 3 sold 142,905 the previous year. So, as you can see, model wide-disrupting model 3 to some degree. Not completely, but to some degree, and that’s okay.3rd place ID 4, 68,000. Fourth place, Fiat 500 electric with 66,732.The Fiat 500 is quite expensive. It’s surprising to me that so many people buy them and are willing to pay almost double the price for the electric version versus the gasoline version. I’m not convinced it’s compelling for the price. I really think you’d be better off with model3. It’s only like 10% more. 10% more money for a car that’s literally twice the size and it’s more efficient, has more range. Anyhow, you get the point.
Volkswagen ID 3 was in 6th place with 53,000 Skoda Enyaq 52,000 Dacia Spring 48,000. The Peugeot e with 46,000. The best place Korean car was the Hyundai Kona electric with 41,880 sales over 12 months. That’s good enough for 11th place. Kia Niro EV was in 12th with 38,633 and the Hyundai Ioniq5, which in my opinion, it is one of the best EVs you can buy. But there’s still not a lot of supply globally, it had 38,000 deliveries.
So many people keep saying BMW sales are really amazing. Have a look at their sales. I mean, look how many EVs they’re selling. And that’s what I mean about misreporting this information. It’s completely misreported. I have been asking some of these websites, please stop misreporting this information. You’re brainwashing the general public into thinking that electric car sales from BMW, for example, are amazing. They’re not. BMW’s best-selling electric car in Europe was actually not a BMW. It was a mini cooper SC with 34,000 deliveries. That’s not a hot big number, 34,000. It’s good, though. It’s really good. It’s not even a BMW though. BMW’s best-selling electric car wasn’t even electric. It’s a plug-in hybrid. It’s the BMW 3 series plugin hybrid with 34,000 deliveries in Europe. It’s not a car of the future. I think that’s fair to say. In fact, BMW didn’t have a BMW in the top best 20-selling electric car models in Europe. That’s in Europe. That’s BMW’s home market. They didn’t have anything, right? Is that a success? I don’t think it is.
What about Mercedes? Mercedes didn’t have a single model in the top 20 best-selling EVs in Europe. That’s a fail. Audi, they did. In fact, Audi didn’t do too badly. Audi Q4 E-tron was in 10th place with 42,540 sales. So here we go. Here’s what I mean by misreporting facts, right?
Under all that data, if you look at inside EVs, Clean Technica, for example now, these are great websites, you can use them for sure, but it’s still a little bit misleading if you have those numbers. And then below it, you say the top brands in automotive groups. And then you put Volkswagen Group in first place with a 20.6% market share, right? Then Stellantis with a 14.6% market share, followed by BMW Group with a 10.5% market share, followed by Hyundai Motor Group with a 10% market share, Mercedes with 9%, then Tesla with 9%. And then you say that Tesla is only the 6th best-selling automotive brand in Europe for the year 2022. Of course, those figures include everything plugin. Is everything plugin in an EV? Well, not in my books. Let me know if you agree or you disagree.
