Global plug-in electric car sales increased in May by just 12%, which is a relatively low result compared to what we're accustomed to. The biggest factor was the slow down in China, which increased only by 2% (below the global average rate).

In total, sales amounted to roughly 179,000 at 2.3% market share.

See more our sales reports for May 2019 here.

73% of all plug-ins were all-electric cars, which also increased by 22% year-over-year.

After five months of 2019, sales stand at over 841,000 (up 52%). The expected sales of 3.5 million in 2019 (compared to 2 million in 2018) is now in question.

Global Plug-In Electric Car Sales – May 2019

Models rank

Tesla Model 3 without any problem takes #1 for the month (17,965) and for the year (86,315 YTD) as there is no other model that could note similar sales levels.

The next two - BYD Yuan (6,044 and 36,918 YTD) and BAIC EU-Series (7,079 and 31,160 YTD) were the best of the rest, but not even close to five-digit monthly sales.

The Nissan LEAF (4,678 and 29,796 YTD) in May fell to 4th position.

Thanks to the Volkswagen Passat GTE, the number of plug-in hybrids in the top 20 increased to 5 (black names):

Manufacturers rank

BYD's advantage over Tesla decreased in May and is expected to disappear in June, so Tesla will be able at least for some time to move back into first place.

BYD: 20,947 and 115,147 YTD

Tesla: 23,156 and 107,329 YTD

The crazy pace of the leaders is currently out of range for SAIC, BMW, Nissan and BAIC (between 8,000 and 10,000).

Interestingly, Toyota moved up a little bit to #13 with 5,974 sales in May:

Our thanks to EV Sales Blog for tallying up and estimating the individual sales by OEM