More in line with the US auto market’s trends than the European auto market’s trends, plugin vehicle market share in South Korea is at about 2% this year. Furthermore, it is dominated by just a few models.
While Europe has dozens of electric vehicle models on the market (thank you, EU leadership), South Korea, like the US (especially outside of California), is a wasteland.
Two models — the Tesla Model 3 (31%) and Hyundai Kona EV (23%) — account for 54% of the Korean EV market.
While South Korea has just 2% plugin vehicle market share, Iceland is at 53% market share, and Norway is at nearly 70% so South Korea could do much better.
In 2020, Hyundai and Kia had to sell a lot more EVs in Europe or be faced with steep fines. So they shipped more EVs to Europe … and took them away from the Korean market.
As such the Kona EV’s sales were down 45% year over year in its home country.
Hyundai now has a factory in the Czech Republic where it is building the Kona EV for European buyers, which will theoretically allow Hyundai to deliver more cars in South Korea again.
The Korean market, like the Japanese market, is having a disappointingly slow shift to electric vehicles.
Reference- EV Volumes website, Top Grear, Clean Technica
