Blog of RENAULT NISSAN Alliance

The charge of the Electric Vehicle Brigade is well and truly underway. According to figures gathered by the University of California, Davis – one of the world’s leading research institutions – at least half a million EVs have been sold globally in the ‘modern’ era.

In fact, the figure is nearer 600,000 but the researchers elected to play it safe by waiting until sales were well over half a million before making the announcement.

In arriving at these figures, UC Davis included Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), collectively referring to them as Plug-in Electric Vehicles or PEVs. The world’s best selling PEV (which in this case could stand for Pure Electric Vehicle) is, of course, the Nissan LEAF.

The biggest PEV market in the world is the USA with more than 200,000 vehicles sold in the past three years, a third of which were registered in California. To date the United States has accounted for around 45 percent of all PEV sales with Japan in second place ahead of China and the Netherlands.

With the half million milestone having been reached, UC Davis is now predicting serious growth for the PEV.

Between 2010-2014 the researchers believed only ‘innovators’, accounting for less than 1 percent of new cars sales, would opt for a PEV. ‘Fast followers’ will increase the take up to as much as 5 percent between 2014-2018 with the ‘early majority’ taking sales to perhaps 15 percent of all new car sales by 2025.

Picture credit: via UC Davis