Costa Rica EV Sales Report: Latin America’s Champion Surpasses All Expectations in July as ¼ of Market Becomes Fully Electric in July – CleanTechnica

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Seven months ago, I wrote this: If January is to be an indicator, 2024 will also bring great growth to Costa Rica’s EV market, but it’s hard to predict where it will end. One can hope for 25% market share, but I feel somewhere around 17% is more plausible. Time will tell! (That’s from the 2023 LatAm EV sales report.)

I’m here to update on that prediction. As months have passed, growth has accelerated not only year on year, but also month on month: this means yearly market share for the first six months of the year already crossed 15% and keeps rising.

Now, if we were limited to June’s data, this would be it, and my prediction wouldn’t be too far off. But the country seems to have “pulled a Uruguay” in July, with 197% growth YoY from an already very high base level, surpassing my hyper-optimistic 25% market share prediction for the month!

General Overview

You may have noticed that I did not specify the exact market share. Full disclosure: I don’t know it.

Costa Rica is surprisingly obscure: the country provides aggregate data on EV registrations from the Ministry of Energy and Mining, but little else. I haven’t found a way to locate total registrations, much less sales per model or brand, and I have to rely on local blogs* and media to make out what the exact situation is. Based upon that, this is what we know:

First, EV registrations have been rising, reaching a new record of 1,343 BEVs in July. PHEV data is not available, but we know all hybrids amount for only 4% of the market.

Second, total vehicle sales are expected to rise this year, getting close to or perhaps surpassing the all-time record from 2016: 59,600. The market does not look very seasonal, which would mean July’s registrations should not be far from the monthly average of 5,000.

Based upon these two reasonable assumptions, total market share for July reached 27%, higher than my upper expectations, bringing the yearly number to 16–17%. Another way of seeing it is that Costa Rica’s EV sales in the first seven months of 2024 are already 10% higher than during the entire 2023. If you guys remember our report from 2023, that year Costa Rica had 11.7% BEV market share.

Sales per Brand

Costa Rica isn’t only the most successful EV market in the Americas, it’s also one of the most diverse ones. Unlike other markets with very high growth, like Uruguay and Colombia, Costa Rica does not present near-complete domination by one automaker (which in the previous cases is BYD).

Instead, the country has the healthy presence of a lot of brands — most of them Chinese — and what seems to be the most competitive ecosystem in the entire continent. While BYD owns 70% of Uruguay’s market, and achieved 50% market share in Colombia during July, in Costa Rica this brand only accounts for a quarter of EV sales.

Costa Rica is also the only Latin American market where Geely has a significant presence outside of its best known brand (Volvo), thanks to the success of its affordable Geometry models.

Final Thoughts

In my most recent report about Colombia, I mentioned that the presence of 6 sub-$25,000 BEV models in the market was boosting sales. Well, as far as I could find, there are 11 such models in Costa Rica! Some of them are not available outside this country, like the Geometry E, which originally sparked the price war that allowed Costa Rica to become the indisputable leader in the region (and which is now $2,000 cheaper than it was when it arrived!).

An interesting fact is that Made-in-Mexico EVs end up being cheaper in Costa Rica than in their home market: such is the case with the JAC E30X ($22,000 in Costa Rica, $24,500 in Mexico) and the JAC eSei4 ($28,000 in Costa Rica, $37,500 in Mexico). This is why one brand isn’t enough and a competitive ecosystem must be built for lower prices to arrive in these markets!

Like Uruguay, Costa Rica has relatively expensive gasoline (at around $5 a gallon), lacks oil reserves, and produces plentiful, affordable renewable energy. This means that replacing foreign oil for local electricity makes a lot of sense for the country.

The charging network in Costa Rica seems to be decent, with a widespread amount of 50kW DC stations with GB/T and CCS1/CCS2 chargers. However, most of the locations have only one stand, which means the risk of failure is high and users could get stranded. I’m yet to find comments regarding lines and long waiting times, but unless more stands are readily deployed, this is only a matter of time. Sales are rising fast, and the infrastructure must keep up.

In any case, Costa Rica’s path to electrification is accelerating, and if it’s an indicator of what’s to come in the rest of the region … well, Legacy Auto must brace for impact, because ICEVs won’t retain their numbers for much longer.

At last, some of you may have noticed we changed our Brand Market Share for EV Sales chart. This was because of a recommendation from a reader, and I would like your opinion of it. Is this one better, or did you prefer the old one, with rectangular bars?

*Mainly the blog from Alejandro Montero (Ale Montero Tech), a local EV champion who I feel deserves credit for all the work he does in that country.