 |
Hyundai Motor’s electric vehicle Kona (Hyundai Motor) |
Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors overtook German brand BMW to rank fourth in the global electric vehicle market this year, data showed Monday.
Local research company SNE Research said Hyundai and Kia sold a combined 130,000 EVs in the global market between January and September this year. The figure is up 40.7 percent from the same period last year.
The strong performance was driven by a surge in sales of the Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona, Kia XCeed Plug-in Hybrid and Hyundai Porter 2 Electric. The companies’ combined market share rose to 7.2 percent from 5.7 percent in the same period last year.
US electric car company Tesla took first place due to the popularity of its Model 3. The company sold a total of 316,000 units in the January-September period of this year, with its market share reaching 17.5 percent.
During the same period, Volkswagen Group sold 233,000 units, ranking second with a 12.9 percent market share. Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi ranked third with an 8.2 percent share.
By Shin Ji-hye (
shinjh@heraldcorp.com)
