Mitsubishi the new market leader

The figures are in for new car registrations for the first month of this year, and Mitsubishi has claimed the top spot for passenger and light commercial vehicles with an all-time high of 2814 registrations.

This was helped by the constant supply of the Triton ute, with an order for 5000 units in September, and high demand for the new Outlander. The brand is confident more growth is yet to come. The Outlander PHEV will launch later this month, and already 500 have been preordered.

‘‘Outlander has long been a Kiwi family favourite and Triton just keeps winning more fans every year. Knowing that the number of happy Mitsubishi owners is also increasing, across our full range of vehicles, is something that keeps driving us to do better,’’ said Reece Congdon, head of marketing and corporate affairs.

Mitsubishi took 21 per cent of the market last month, followed by Ford and Toyota, both at 9 per cent and 1219 units and 1166 units respectively.

Overall registrations came in at 13,514 units, a decrease of 2.73 per cent (379 units) on the same month last year.

Supply issues are showing their head now, particularly visible in Toyota’s figures, although by no means limited to just the Japanese brand.

The top-selling passenger and SUV models for the month were the Mitsubishi

Outlander (1188 units) followed by the Hyundai Kona (7304 units) and the MG ZS

(302 units).

Meanwhile, the Triton was the most popular commercial vehicle for January, with 1118 units sold. It beat the Ford Ranger’s 953 units and the Toyota Hilux’s 507 units.

As for electrified vehicles, 470 battery-electric vehicles were registered, as well as 208 plug-in hybrids, and 828 hybrids.

The top-selling fully electric cars were the Hyundai Kona (78 units) followed by the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (59 units) and the BMW i (42 units). BMW is

being a bit cheeky though, as ‘i’ covers all electric models under the ‘i’ badge.

A total of 208 plug-in hybrids were sold last month. The top-sellers were the MG HS +EV (53 units) followed by the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV (46 units) and the Kia Sorento (20 units).

Finally, of the 828 hybrids registered, the most popular model was the Honda Jazz (149 units), followed by the Toyota Yaris (87 units) and the Toyota RAV4 (77 units).