EV a top ten seller for the first time in NZ
Thursday, 3 October 2019
For the first time ever an electric vehicle has broken into the top ten vehicle sales for the month after deliveries of the long-awaited Tesla Model 3 began.
With the registration and delivery of 359 Model 3's, Tesla surged to 12th place in overall vehicle sales for the month, with the Model 3 taking third in passenger car sales, following the Toyota Corolla (1011 units) and Yaris (432 units).
In terms of private passenger vehicle sales, however, the EV was on top, with 736 of the Corollas sales going to rental companies, which also accounted for 306 Yaris sales.
Along with the Model 3 being popular in the traditional segment, utes sales faltered in September, although overall sales actually reversed the recent downward trend by being 4.2 per cent higher than the same month in 2018.
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U tes were still strong, though, with the Ford Ranger being the second most popular vehicle overall with 814 sales, while the Toyota Hilux racked up 603 sales followed by the Holden Colorado on 449.
Motor Industry Association Chief Executive David Crawford says that sales of rentals and EVs helped to push September to being a record month and there were 500 sales of pure electric vehicles, with a further 105 sales of plugin hybrid vehicles.
He says overall year-to-date sales were down by 4.0 per cent on the first nine months of 2018, with more than 4,800 fewer vehicles sold in 2019 to date.
'The month of September continues the up and down pattern in the 2019 market,' said Crawford.
'In addition to strong sales of EVs, some distributors had a good month with Holden rocketing up the sales charts and Toyota enjoying a massive September mainly off the back of rental sales.'
The strong month for Tesla comes on the back of stronger sales for EVs in general this year, with 1,406 new pure electric vehicles being registered so far in 2019, compared to 768 units for the whole of 2018.
However, this is still a relatively small fraction of overall vehicle sales - to put it into perspective, Toyota has sold more Hiace vans so far this year, with 1,471 registrations.
Registration of 10,322 passenger and SUVs for September 2019 were up 9.4 per cent (890 units) on 2018, while commercial vehicle registrations of 4,203 were down 6.1 per cent (275 units).
Toyota remains the overall market leader with 21 per cent market share (3,007 units), followed by Holden with 9 per cent (1,333 units) with Ford slipping to third spot with 1,291 units sold, representing a 9 per cent share
Smaller vehicles dominated the market in September with the top three segments for the month being the medium SUV (18 per cent), followed by compact SUVs (14 per cent) and small passenger vehicles in third with a 12 per cent market share. It is the first month in several years the pick up/cab chassis 4x4 segment has not been in the one of the top three selling segments.
The ten best-selling vehicles for September 2019 were:
Toyota Corolla -1,011
Ford Ranger - 814
Toyota Hilux - 603
Holden Colorado - 449
Toyota Yaris - 432
Mitsubishi Triton - 386
Tesla Model 3 - 359
Toyota RAV4 - 312
Mazda CX-5 - 310
Nissan Qashqai - 310