Sales of electric cars in Turkey have been really good this year. A new brand of electric cars made in Turkey has become really popular and is selling a lot of cars. From January to August this year, almost 22,900 electric cars were sold. That's a big increase from last year when only 3,283 electric cars were sold during the same time.
Another type of car that uses both gasoline and electricity also sold well. They sold 65.7% more cars in the first eight months, reaching 60,489 cars.
Even though this new Turkish brand, called Togg, started selling cars just four months ago, they have quickly become the best-selling brand for electric cars. They sold 3,400 of their T10X cars by the end of August, and almost 2,000 of those were sold last month.
Togg started making their fully electric SUV last October and began delivering them in late April. They plan to sell about 20,000 of these cars by the end of 2023.
In total, from January to August, 755,282 passenger cars and small commercial vehicles were sold in Turkey. That's 64.7% more than the same time last year. Passenger cars went up by 64.3%, reaching 582,419 cars, and small commercial vehicle sales increased by 66.4%, reaching 172,863 cars.
People are buying more cars because the Turkish lira is losing its value, and prices are going up. Cars are seen as a way to protect money from losing value because of high inflation.
Electric cars and cars that use both gasoline and electricity now make up a bigger part of the market. They have 3.9% and 10.4% of the market, up from 0.9% and 10.3% last year.
Cars that run on gasoline used to make up 70% of sales from January to August, but now it's down to 61.6%. Diesel cars went from 17% to 15.7%.
Togg's T10X is now very popular. It has an 18.2% share in the electric car market and is leading in the electric SUV and C-SUV markets. In August, 3% of all passenger cars sold were Togg's T10X.
Togg is now the biggest brand and model in the Turkish electric car market, even beating international brands like Tesla. Tesla doesn't share its sales numbers by country.
Togg's T10X comes with one type of engine and two types of batteries. These batteries can go 314 kilometers or 523 kilometers on a single charge. And they can charge from 20% to 80% in less than 28 minutes at fast-charging stations.
A group of five Turkish companies called the Automobile Initiative Group of Turkey is making these cars with the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey.
Togg plans to make four more types of cars by 2030 - a sedan, C-hatchback, B-SUV, and B-MPV. The sedan will be made after the SUV.
They can make about 100,000 cars in a year right now, but they plan to increase that to 175,000 cars once their factory is working at full capacity.
The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says they will make 28,000 cars this year. Togg hopes to make 1 million cars across these five types by 2030.
Togg plans to start selling cars outside of Turkey in 2025, but for now, they're focused on selling in Turkey.
