Chinese electric carmaker BYD is probably the biggest automobile company in the world that you have never even heard of. It has zoomed past the USA brand Tesla to become the best-selling brand of electric vehicle in Singapore.
Fresh statistics from the Land Transport Authority (LTA) records that 303 electric cars were registered by BYD from January to May, with Tesla following with 283 and BMW with 249. Approximately 20% of BYD sales were to private hire operators while newcomers to the top ten bestsellers were Volvo and Opel.
The Bluecar was replaced by Opel in the electric car sharing Company BlueSG, since supply for the latter has ceased. Volvo which was in 6th position displaced the best-selling electric vehicle brand of Audi in 2022, which was in the 10th position.
Tesla posted the biggest drop of 4.7% points while half of the top ten bestsellers suffered a plunge in market share. Observes believed this could be due to some of the novelty associated with the brand waning, along with stronger competition from other EV brands.
This trend is not unique to S’pore. It was reported in April by Reuters that Tesla’s share of electric vehicles sales in one of its sales strongholds – California – had dipped to 59.6% for the full-year 2022 during the first quarter, down from 72.7% despite the electric vehicle maker having cut prices 6 times during the year.
Owing to this, for the first time during its 20-year history, Tesla started advertising with its first advertisement which was a video featuring Singapore.1,462 electric automobiles were registered during the first 5 months of 2023, according to the LTA figures, which accounted for 13.4% of total registrations – slightly up from 11.7% in 2022. As of the end of May, there were 7,961 electric cars on the road, which accounted for merely 1.2% of the total population of cars. LTA had itemized parallel import registrations for the first time. Parallel imports are vehicles that are sold by non-authorized retailers who source their automobiles from dealers in overseas markets.
Parallel imports accounted for 21.7% of car registrations during the first 5 months of 2023, holding steady from 20.6% in 2022. Their share of Toyota sales increased while Mercedes Benz fell. Parallel imports however have only a 1.6 share compared with 17.1% by authorized gents, having a far weaker hold of the EV market.
Chairman of diversified motor group, Prime – Mr. Neo Nam Heng – stated of there were 4 main reasons for this. One was that the Japanese domestic models that parallel importers target have a diverse charging system.
Two is that several manufacturers are unable to provide total power output figures needed by the authorities in Singapore. Three is a lack of backup technical service, he stated. The majority of European electric vehicles come with periodic software updates that are done over the air which are not available to the majority of parallel imported cars.
