keep in mind, on the other side of the world... BYD and their plug-in hybrids dominate the chinese market, and does have some sort of market presence in europe.
(plug-in hybrid taxi in spain... isn't that an old toyota corolla?):
 
BYD Expects Its Electric Car Sales To Triple This Year
Quote:
Bloomberg reports that BYD could triple its plug-in electric car sales in China this year.
A market that Bloomberg can’t help but note is apparently “coveted by Tesla“, and that for 2016 has withdrawn a target of 10,000 sales moving back to 5,000. A number that BYD can eat up in less than a month.
In 2015, BYD sold some 58,000 plug-in cars (e5, e6, Qin, Tang, etc.) and the company expects that this year it could increase to 150,000 – a number similar to the total amount of plug-ins that will be sold in the US in 2016.
Through the end of February, BYD was still just less than 10,000 plug-ins sold, so 140,000 more to go in the next 10 months. (Of note: The first quarter in China is notoriously slow, last year about 1/3rd of Q4 volumes)
“BYD may sell as many as 150,000 new-energy vehicles this year, compared with the 58,000 it delivered in 2015, Chairman Wang Chuanfu said at a briefing in Hong Kong. The company surged the most in more than five months in intraday trading in Hong Kong after predicting first-quarter profit may rise more than 50 percent from a year earlier.”
Big bump for BYD is nearly sevenfold increase in net income in 2015 compared to 2014.
“BYD, which counts Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. as a shareholder, reported full-year net income rose almost sevenfold to 2.82 billion yuan ($433 million) from a year earlier.”
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they are not sexy, possibly death traps, but their products are affordable for the unwashed masses won't don't care about how many g's it can pull on the skidpad or "ludicrous speed"...
but if they start really going full EV/zero emissions and still be low cost....
http://www.byd.com/la/auto/e6.html
we might all be in these things, and hopefully won't go up in flames like those counterfeit hoverboards 
__________________
"The guy in the CR-V meanwhile, he'll give you a haughty glare. He's responsibly trying to lessen his impact, but there you go lumbering past him with your loud V8, flouting the new reality. You may as well go do some donuts in a strawberry patch and slalom through a litter of kittens." Dan Frio, Automotive Editor, Edmunds
Last edited by thumper; 04-05-2016 at 12:22 PM.
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