Tesla Model S Secured First Position as the Best-Selling Plug-In Car in 2015

With deliveries of 50,366 units, Tesla Model S was the best selling plug-in electric vehicle last year.

While many have eyed Tesla just reaching its 50,000-52,000 global sales target in 2015, even though it was left well behind, Tesla Model S was significantly sold more than any other plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) last year.

With the company’s 50,366 sales mark for 2015, the luxurious Model S proved to be the number one bestselling electric vehicle going ahead of Nissan Leaf, which contributed to around 43,000 sales across the globe. Model S has also proved to be the second most sold car with 107,148 deliveries since its launch in mid-2012, following Nissan Leaf with a head start from December 2010, ahead of GM’s Volt/Ampera also launched in December 2010 with sales of 106,000 units.

The sales of Model S last year also proved to be a significant jump from 2014 when Tesla delivered 31,655 cars that took the title of the second most sold vehicle. The company has continued to make new records. Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV took the third position last year with approximate sales of 39,000 units due to markets abroad, as it faced a delay and still not launched in the United States.

BYD Qin PHV marked the fourth position with deliveries of 31,898 units only in China last year, while BMW i3 secured the fifth with worldwide deliveries of 24,057 units, according to sales tracker, Mario R Duron.

In all, the global market absorbed around 500,000 PEVs in 2015, which means that Tesla contributed to around 10%. Its home country cumulatively proved to be its largest market, the United States, which has absorbed around 60% of Model S production since release. Norway is the second one with about 9.4%, while China remains the third one. Similarly, Holland, Canada, and Germany are fourth, fifth and sixth markets respectively. Switzerland and Denmark have acquired the seventh and eighth positions.

Entering the final quarter of 2015, Tesla needs to go far ahead with only 33,151 worldwide sales, and it winded up recording 17,400 more vehicles from September 1 to September 31 of which only 208 were its Model X SUV. This did not make Tesla the best seller of PEVs, as when its sales were taken into account, China’s BYD ended up last year with 58,728 deliveries in the country ahead of its 50,580 units, including Model X sold globally. 

CEO Musk told on Monday that Apple’s development of new electric car to compete with his organization is an "an open secret". Apple has not officially stated its plans for such endeavors. “It is pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it,” Elon spoke to BBC in an interview at Tesla’s design studio in the Los Angeles Area. He does not seem bothered about this particular “competition” though.