With 1,937 units sold in July alone, the Renault Mégane E-Tech is at the top of electric car sales, ahead of the Peugeot e-208.
As we know, the automobile market is not really in its best shape at the moment, and has been for several quarters already. As the latest CCFA report points out, sales of new cars have indeed fallen by 7.1% in July, and by 15.3% since the start of the year. A trend that we owe to many factors, such as the health crisis, the shortage of semiconductors or even the supply concerns linked to the war in Ukraine.
But in all this tumult, some categories are still doing a little better than others. This is particularly the case for electric cars, whose sales have increased by 69% according to the data firm AAA Data.. A nice increase, while petrol and diesel engines lost 12% and 27% respectively in July.
The Renault Mégane E-Tech is a hit
Electric has grown strongly in one year, while this engine currently has a market share of 12.1% since January, against only 7.7% over the same period last year. But as you can imagine, some models are more successful than others. If the best-selling electric car since the start of the year – at least between January and June – is the Peugeot e-208, with 11,091 copies sold, the city car now has a major rival.
This is the new Renault Mégane E-Tech, which is currently the top seller in the electric car segment for the whole of July. In total, no less than 1,937 units were sold, compared to 1,379 for the city car with the lion. How often, the Renault Zoé arrives on the third step of the podium with 953 recorded sales. Suffice to say that the French have the coast, then ahead of a Fiat 500 sold in 938 copies over the same period.
No Tesla appears in the top 10 – the Model Y even appears in the 29th position, according to Clean Automotive – despite its generally reported excellent sales figures. And that’s completely normal. Indeed, the American manufacturer has a habit of making its European deliveries in the second and third month of each quarter. The first month therefore usually shows very weak results.
new habits
Looking at the accumulation since the beginning of the year, we notice that the ranking is not quite the same. Indeed, the Peugeot e-208 remains in the lead (11,091), followed by the Dacia Spring with 9,864 units sold while the Fiat 500 comes in 3rd place with 9,860 sales. If city cars are on the rise, AAA Data has however noticed that buyers of new electric cars are generally older than those opting for combustion (50.6 years against 44.9 years on average]. Unsurprisingly, the latter come from more affluent groups.
If the customers of this type of engine live mainly in Île-de-France, they live a little more in rural municipalities than the buyers of thermal models (28% against 26%). If they prefer second-hand (89%), 43% of owners of electric models bought their car new. Nevertheless, rental represents 42% of electric and plug-in hybrid models, compared to only 7% of other engines.
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