Electrified vehicle sales units grew 146 percent through August while the market around them shrank, and share is moving with them.
The Bottom Line
- Electrified vehicles took about 24 percent of CAMPI and TMA sales in August, up from about 6 percent a year earlier.
- Hybrid sales supply the volume at 3,000 units, while PHEV sales grew fastest at 462 percent.
- Strip out electrified units and conventional sales fell about 21 percent from January to August, by HemosPH’s calculation.
- CAMPI sales data misses roughly 29,000 electrified units sold by non-member brands, so share conclusions drawn from it alone are incomplete.
- Makers with thin hybrid, PHEV, and BEV lineups lose share in soft months too, and their dealers carry the cost.
Heavy rain and flooding pushed August vehicle sales down 18 percent to 29,611 units, according to the joint report from the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines (CAMPI) and the Truck Manufacturers Association (TMA). Electrified vehicle sales rose 215 percent to 7,066 units in the same month. A weather event does not explain a split that wide.
The year-to-date figures confirm it. From January to August, CAMPI and TMA members sold 271,336 vehicles, down 11 percent from 305,381. Electrified units reached 45,403, up 146 percent from 18,439.
Calculated from those figures, electrified vehicle sales took about 24 percent of August volume against about 6 percent a year earlier. Year to date, the share is about 17 percent against about 6 percent. A segment that small rarely rewrites a market’s structure. This one is doing it while the market shrinks.
Electrified Vehicle Sales Hold While Volume Falls
Both main categories fell in August. Passenger cars dropped 11 percent to 6,784 units and commercial vehicles dropped 20 percent to 22,827. CAMPI president Jose Maria Atienza called the dip a short-term disruption and expects a rebound before year-end. He may be right about the total. The weather story does not cover electrified vehicle sales, which grew through the same flooding.
Hybrids Carry the Volume
Conventional hybrids made up 3,000 of the 7,066 August units, up 132 percent. PHEV sales grew fastest, up 462 percent to 1,617 units. BEVs rose 271 percent to 2,449.
The year-to-date order holds. Hybrids reached 23,764 units, up 63 percent. PHEVs reached 8,756, up 1,420 percent. BEVs reached 12,883, up 293 percent from 3,278.
The mix matters more than the headline. The biggest bucket needs no charger and no change in buyer habits. The fastest-growing bucket lets buyers keep a combustion engine as a backstop. Pure BEVs are growing off a small base. Calling this an EV boom misreads it. Electrified vehicle sales are growing in stages, and the stages that ask the least change of the buyer carry the volume.
Conventional Volume Takes the Hit
Take electrified units out and the picture sharpens. By HemosPH’s calculation, assuming electrified units sit inside the reported totals, conventional sales fell about 34 percent in August, from roughly 33,900 to 22,500 units. From January to August they fell about 21 percent, from roughly 286,900 to 225,900.
The report does not publish these figures. They are derived. Electrified vehicle sales are not just surviving a soft market. They are taking a growing share of it.
CAMPI Sales Data Misses a Large Slice
CAMPI and TMA estimate total industry electrified sales at 74,600 units from January to August. Their own member tally is 45,403. The remaining 29,000 or so units, about 39 percent of the volume, sit with brands outside the association, BYD among them. Including those estimates lifts August industry sales to 34,390 units.
Any share reading built on CAMPI sales data alone is incomplete. Toyota’s 49 percent share and Mitsubishi’s 17 percent describe the members’ market, not the whole one. The report also gives no electrified split by brand, so it cannot say which members are winning the shift.
What Dealers and Automakers Face
If the split in electrified vehicle sales holds, share moves toward makers with deep hybrid, PHEV, and BEV lineups, and it moves in soft months too. A maker with a thin electrified range loses ground in good months and bad ones.
The cost lands in dealerships next. Conventional stock ages on the lot when conventional demand falls by a fifth. Service bays need technicians trained on high-voltage systems. Dealers selling plug-in models need charging that works on site. Factory allocation follows what sells, which moves away from slower models. Training and stock orders both run on lead times, so a late read costs twice. None of this appears in the CAMPI report. It is the operating reading of the numbers.
The flood will fade from the sales data. The split predates it, because the January to August figures already show electrified units growing while the rest of the market shrinks. Makers and dealers with thin electrified offerings are already losing ground in a market that is shrinking around them. Better weather restores the total. It does not restore the share.
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