In October, global registrations of plug-in electric cars once again amounted to nearly 1.3 million units, marginally behind the September record.
According to EV-Volumes data, shared by researcher Jose Pontes, 1,279,000 new passenger plug-in electric cars were registered globally in October (37% more than a year ago), which is only about 12,000 less than in September.
The share of rechargeable cars out of the total global car registrations stands at 17%, including 12% for all-electric cars and 5% for plug-in hybrids.
Especially positive is the solid growth rate of 33% year-over-year for all-electric cars, although plug-in hybrids noted an even higher increase of 46% year-over-year.
There is a very big chance that in November or December, we might see more than 1.4 million new plug-in electric car registrations, so stay tuned for more records.
Plug-in car registrations for the month:
- BEVs: about *870,000 and 12% market share
- PHEVs: about *409,000 and 5% market share
- Total: 1,279,000 (up 37%) and 17% market share
* estimated from the market share
Global Plug-In Electric Car Sales – October 2023
So far this year, more than 10.7 million plug-in electric cars have been registered around the world, which is about 16% of the total volume, we estimate.
Plug-in car registrations year-to-date:
- BEVs: about *7.5 million
- PHEVs: about *3.2 million
- Total: 10,731,954 (up 38%) and over 16%* market share
* estimated
For reference, in 2022, more than 10 million new passenger plug-in electric cars were registered globally for the very first time. This result will be significantly improved upon in 2023, potentially to more than 13 million units.
Model rank
As previously, the Tesla Model Y continued to be the world's best-selling plug-in model in October with more than 78,000 new registrations.
Just like in September, behind the Model Y, there are five BYD nameplates (when counting BEVs and PHEVs together), followed by another Tesla (Model 3) and three more Chinese models.
Top 10 for the month:
- Tesla Model Y - 78,250
- BYD Song Plus - 64,990 (10,832 BEVs + 54,158 PHEVs)
- BYD Yuan Plus (aka Atto 3) - 47,134
- BYD Qin Plus - 38,288 (9,390 BEVs + 28,898 PHEVs)
- BYD Seagull - 37,837
- BYD Dolphin - 32,933
- Tesla Model 3 - 32,061
- GAC Aion Y - 27,140
- Wuling Bingo: 23,744
- BYD Han - 20,457 (9,480 BEVs + 10,977 PHEVs)
* BEV and PHEV versions of the same models were counted together in the source.
After the first ten months of the year, the Tesla Model Y approached one million registrations, while the BYD Song plug-ins almost reached 500,000 units. The Tesla Model 3 is third best, at over 417,000 registrations.
The list of top 20 rechargeable cars is dominated by the Chinese models. The best non-Tesla and non-Chinese EVs are the #12 Volkswagen ID.4 with over 151,000 units, the #16 Volkswagen ID.3 (105,000), and the #20 Audi Q4 e-tron (almost 89,000).
Brand rank
In terms of brands, BYD is becoming stronger and stronger, leaving Tesla far behind. The Chinese manufacturer with almost 290,000 new registrations in October, has noticeably beaten Tesla (over 115,000 units) also in the all-electric car segment.
We saw that BYD was almost on par with Tesla in the BEV segment in Q3, but in Q4 and potentially in 2024, BYD might be the top player in terms of volume for BEVs, PHEVs, and all passenger plug-ins.
It's wort noing the relatively strong position of the SAIC-GM-Wuling joint venture and an improvement on the Volkswagen side.
Top 10 for the month:
- BYD - 289,588
- Tesla - 115,055
- SAIC-GM-Wuling - 54,921
- Volkswagen - 44,112
- BMW - 43,598
- GAC Aion - 41,353
- Li Auto - 40,424
- Changan - 38,939
- Geely - 38,665
- Mercedes-Benz - 32,922
After the first ten months of 2023, the step change between BYD (2.26 million) and Tesla (over 1.43 million) became even steeper. Similarly, the rest of the industry was left behind.
