In March Hyundai started the deliveries of the Kona Electric made at its European manufacturing plant, in Czech Republic. Back then European production was at 150 Kona Electrics per day and Hyundai planed to produce 30.000 electric cars this year in Europe.
Hyundai also expected that by delivering 80.000 electric cars to European customers this year, it would become the biggest provider of zero-emission vehicles in Europe in 2020.
However, due to the COVID-19 lockdown Hyundai suspended production at its Nosovice plant in the Czech Republic on March 21. Nonetheless, Hyundai was one of the first automakers to resume production in Europe, which happened on April 14.
How much did the lockdowns affected the production of Hyundai’s electric cars?
Let’s see the sales figures of Hyundai’s electric cars.
Hyundai IONIQ Electric
Domestic market (South Korea)
- January: 2
- February: 104
- March: 276
- April: 121
- May: 83
- June: 152
- Total: 738
Foreign market (mostly Europe)
- January: 1.403
- February: 1.056
- March: 1.749
- April: 1.131
- May: 1.093
- June: 1.011
- Total: 7.443
Hyundai Kona Electric
Domestic market (South Korea)
- January: 35
- February: 213
- March: 1.391
- April: 1.232
- May: 531
- June: 737
- Total: 4.139
Foreign market (mostly Europe)
- January: 3.321
- February: 2.066
- March: 3.662
- April: 3.486
- May: 4.321
- June: 5.627
- Total: 22.483
As you can see, in June Hyundai managed to sell 5.627 units of the Kona Electric outside its domestic market, which represents a sales record for this automaker.
It seems that the production of ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars was much more affected by the lockdowns than the production of electric cars. One possible explanation is that since electric cars are simpler to build and require far fewer parts, supplier list is also much shorter and resuming production is always less problematic.
However, EU car lobby is trying to postpone CO2 and safety targets – on the back of COVID-19, which makes no sense to me.
Considering that ICE car sales dropped a lot, automakers can comply with emissions regulations just by selling very few electric cars – and that’s why Volkswagen reduced the production of its electric triplets.
The call for a postponement of CO2 and safety laws seems to only benefit laggards like Fiat, and I hope that other automakers that did their job on time speak against it.
More info:
https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/company/ir/ir-activities/sales-performance
I’ve had my Kona EV for 6 months and it is the best car I’ve ever owned. I’ve owned 47 cars, including 3 EVs.
the Kona is a really great car, been driving it since 11/2018. efficiency is unbelievable for this type of car/form and I usually get a range of 280-350km in winter and 350-450km in summer (with 60-70% Autobahn, rest mostly city).
the only two downsides for me are (which I was of course aware of) FWD with front wheels always slipping even in ECO mode (especially with the bad Nexen tyres), and only 1-phase charging as I can’t charge at home and we have plenty of 11/22kW stations here, combined with mostly per-minute tariffs or fees if you park/charge for a longer period of time (which I would need), hence end of next year I am thinking about changing to whatever is available in my country, hopefully Hyundai 45, MY, or ID4 or something similar which offers at least 3-phase 11kW 🙂
The Hyundai Kona Electric made in Europe has now an optional 11 kW on-board charger.
yes you are right, but the older models don’t have it 🙂
Pedro,
ACEA’s request for postponing emission regulations is not about European fleet average CO2, but it is about the transition from Euro6d-temp to Euro6d. It’s a type registration issue. All cars must comply with Euro6d (which has a lower conformity factor on RDE (real driving emissions) NOx test results) on january 1st I believe and many cars must be re-tested/re-approved. So it has little to do with BEV’s, but I still agree with your rant 😉
You’re right Leo, thanks for the heads up. I revised the article accordingly with a better link.