South Korean automotive manufacturer Hyundai Motor Company has reported a steep decline in its global car sales for the month of September, though the plug-in segment continued to grow. According to fresh data, Hyundai’s global car sales (on the manufacturer level) slipped to 279,307 units in September 2021, down 24 per cent from the corresponding month of 2020.

Luckily, the Seoul-headquartered manufacturer enjoyed a 27 per cent year-over-year growth of in sales of plug-in vehicles in the month under review. Sales of plug-in cars jumped to 16,400 units, grabbing a record 5.9 per cent share of the company’s total volume.

The manufacturer’s sales report includes sales figures from the manufacturing facilities in South Korea, China, India and Europe. It may be noted here that the European plants of the company mainly produce Kona Electric and Tucson PHEV. The Chinese and Indian plants produce EVs in comparatively smaller numbers.

While sales of battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs), which are also called all-electric or fully-electric vehicles, barely meet 2020’s level, but plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) continued to make a quick rebound from last year’s low levels.

By type of powertrain, sales of BEVs slipped 0.5 per cent year-over-year to 12,037 units, while PHEVs jumped a whopping 444 per cent to 4,363 units. Thus, total plug-in sales jumped 27 per cent to settle at 16,400 units. FCV sales grew 84 per cent 942 units.

Year to date (YTD), Hyundai plug-in electric car sales crossed the mark of 110,000, representing a year-over-year growth of 35 per cent. The YTD figure represents 3.8 per cent share of the company’s total sales volume. YTD sales by powertrain type includes 9 per cent jump in BEVs to 80,700 units, 279 per cent jump in PHEV sales to 29,894 units, and 38 per cent jump in FCV sales to 7,273 units. Total YTD plug-in sales jumped to 110,594 units in September this year.

When it comes to models, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 accounted for sales of a total of 7,067 units in September and 38,517 YTD; while the Hyundai Kona Electric sold 4,102 units in the month under review and 32,762 units YTD. The Hyundai Tucson PHEV, Hyundai IONIQ Electric, Hyundai Santa Fe PHEV, and Hyundai IONIQ Plug-In accounted for 3,128 (17,549 YTD), 626 (7,773 YTD), 886 (6,449 YTD), and 349 (5,311 YTD) units, respectively. Plug-ins made-in-China (multiple models) accounted for 241 (2,140 YTD) units.