Electric car

According to Polk/IHS, Tesla has passed Nissan to become the best selling Electric car in Canada for the 2013 year. It moved from selling 20% of Canada’s Electric Cars in 2012 to 43% of the cars in 2013.

Consumer research shows that within its release year, the Model S captured a staggering 20% of the electric vehicle market share. Over the course of the next year (2013), it more than doubled to 43%, outselling all other OEMs. It is important to note that with such tremendous gains, Tesla did not necessarily conquest customers from other electric vehicle OEMs, but instead, brought new customers from outside the electric vehicle market to grow the current EV customer base. After all, the current EV competition includes the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi Imiev, Smart Fortwo, Ford focus EV, Toyota Rav4 EV and the Chevrolet Spark.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SoQNX5WF1M]
2 BMW i8s at a GAS STATION

Reuters got the numbers from the Los Angeles Auto Show

Luxury carmaker BMW has orders for nearly 10,000 of its i3 electric cars, the first of which were delivered in Germany last week, the company’s global sales chief, Ian Robertson, said at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Wednesday.

Robertson also said the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car due to be introduced in mid-2014 has sold out for its first year of availability. He did not say how many the company will sell in that first year.

As reported this weekend, Tesla has announced that it has removed the Air Suspension lowering as part of a three step plan to deal with the media attention. The whole Blog post is worth a read but here are the important bits:

First, we have rolled out an over-the-air update to the air suspension that will result in greater ground clearance at highway speeds. To be clear, this is about reducing the chances of underbody impact damage, not improving safety. The theoretical probability of a fire injury is already vanishingly small and the actual number to date is zero. Another software update expected in January will give the driver direct control of the air suspension ride height transitions.

Second, we have requested that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conduct a full investigation as soon as possible into the fire incidents. While we think it is highly unlikely, if something is discovered that would result in a material improvement in occupant fire safety, we will immediately apply that change to new cars and offer it as a free retrofit to all existing cars. Given that the incidence of fires in the Model S is far lower than combustion cars and that there have been no resulting injuries, this did not at first seem like a good use of NHTSA’s time compared to the hundreds of gasoline fire deaths per year that warrant their attention. However, there is a larger issue at stake: if a false perception about the safety of electric cars is allowed to linger, it will delay the advent of sustainable transport and increase the risk of global climate change, with potentially disastrous consequences worldwide. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Third, to reinforce how strongly we feel about the low risk of fire in our cars, we will be amending our warranty policy to cover damage due to a fire, even if due to driver error. Unless a Model S owner actively tries to destroy the car, they are covered. Our goal here is to eliminate any concern about the cost of such an event and ensure that over time the Model S has the lowest insurance cost of any car at our price point. Either our belief in the safety of our car is correct and this is a minor cost or we are wrong, in which case the right thing is for Tesla to bear the cost rather than the car buyer.

TSLA shares are again down in morning pre-market trading.