Dacia Spring Leads Italy’s BEV Market To Record 8% In September As

Originally published on opportunity:energy.

It is a momentous time for electric vehicles throughout Europe. September sales have brought fresh records throughout the continent’s major car markets, and all this is happening in the background of a wider crisis for traditional powertrains. In a quarter-end month filled with expectations for market share as well as individual model exploits, Italy’s car market does not disappoint and boasts historical highs and new entries.

UNRAE statistics are out and once again we find ourselves updating recent highs (and lows, depending on the technology). The overall car market slowed down by a whole third year on year (YoY) to just over 106,000 registrations — they were more than 157,000 a year ago — with traditional petrol and diesel engines more than halving their numbers and reaching new lows — 25% and 19.1%, respectively, well below the 50% mark combined. Traditional hybrids now make up 31.3%, near August’s records, thus consolidating their status as most popular powertrain ahead of pure petrol, a position they’ve been holding since July.

Full electrics are the absolute stars of the month. With a record 8,492 units, BEVs more than doubled YoY (from 4,099 registrations a year ago, when current incentives started), updating the previous March high and reaching a fantastic 8% market share. That result was helped by the lower than usual total registration numbers. With such a quarter-end performance, can we hope for an even stronger push in the remaining three months? Certainly. However, this will depend on supply from manufacturers meeting demand.

Plug-in hybrids scored 5,507 registrations, far from recent levels but nonetheless an almost 90% increase YoY. This figure is worth 5.2% market share, in line with the rest of the year but much lower than the BEV result. With PHEV registrations steady, we could be witnessing a return to favour for full electric models over plug-in hybrids, as was the case until the end of last year. In the era of the chip shortage, are legacy carmakers finally ready to push their full electric offerings “full steam” over ICE and hybrid variants? It would seem wise to do so, and we shall see how they position themselves in the last quarter of 2021.

With this exceptional month, combined plug-in registrations soared to an outstanding 13.2% market share, itself a new record (they broke past 10% for the first time in July). This result closes in on the now quickly declining levels of pure diesel powertrains. At this pace, we are poised to witness a historic shift soon, when plug-ins will overtake diesels for the first time, perhaps as early as December. So, which models are responsible for September’s unprecedented performance? Let’s find out in the monthly top 10 BEVs chart.

Perhaps overdue, but we finally see the new Dacia Spring taking Italy’s market by storm. It actually set an all-time record for any single BEV model: 1,876 monthly registrations. The…