2013 Review: The Green Automotive Market

In this time of celebration and New Year resolutions, it’s good to review the last year. This post will therefore focus on one of the highlights of 2013, the Green Automotive market.

Ford Fusion Hybrid :
2013 brought with it, the new Ford Fusion Hybrid. This car combined a horsepower of 188 and a fuel economy of 4.0 litres/100km in the city and 4.1 on the highway. These characteristics are exceptional for a weight of 1,640 kilograms and for a car which can do 100km/h under electric-only power.

Tesla and the Model S : Tesla is only an intriguing start-up but it was one of the sensations of 2013. They introduced the battery-powered Tesla Model S, a wondrous engineering achievement that has set the bar for all other EVs.

Electrified cars : This topic has been under discussion for years. But what we’ve seen so far is too expensive and too limited. The electrified cars have not reached the numbers expected. “Low and falling gas prices do not help the electric vehicle market,” said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at Edmunds.com. In the United States, which is the reference market, the projected 2013 US sales of top-selling plug-in electric vehicles were:                                                                                                         

1 : Nissan Leaf with 22 000                                                                                                             2 : Chevrolet volt with more than 21 000                                                                                           3 : Tesla Model S : 21 500 *

According to the EVI (Electric Vehicles Initiative) the sales of electrified cars represented 0.02 % of the global sales of cars this year. Despite these low sales statistics it is important to be precise and specify that the sale of electrified cars had doubled between 2011 and 2012.*Tesla’s figures include international sales, though most of its cars are sold in the US.

In the long term, we expect the adoption of the electric car to increase. Growth of sales will be achieved thanks to an important deployment of the supply system in public places. The technological evolutions such as those that took place last year should also allow a significant increase in sales in the medium/long term.

The Car-Rak service looks forward to aiding the shipping of these cars in the future.