Mitsubishi the overall market leader for January

Thursday, 3 February 2022

January 2022 new car sales were down slightly on the same month in 2021, but Mitsubishi got off to a cracking start.

The new car registrations figures are in for the first month of 2022, 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 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 with the Outlander PHEV launching later this month, already holding 500 pre-orders.

“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 head of marketing and corporate affairs, Reece Congdon.

The new Mitsubishi Outlander was the most popular vehicle for January.

Mitsubishi took 21 per cent of the market in January, followed by Ford and Toyota, both at nine per cent and 1219 units and 1166 units respectively.

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The Triton was another big seller, pulling ahead of both the Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux.

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The new Ioniq 5 EV is proving popular, with 59 units sold.

Overall registrations came in at 13,514 units, a decrease of 2.73 per cent (379 units) on the same month in 2021.

Supply issues are showing their head now, particularly visible in Toyotas 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, beating the Ford Ranger’s 953 units and the Toyota Hilux’s 507 units.

As for electrified vehicles, there were 470 battery-electric vehicles registered, along with 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' actually covers all electric models under the 'i' badge.

January also saw 208 plug-in hybrids, with the top-sellers being the MG HS +EV (53 units) followed by the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV (46 units) and then the Kia Sorento (20 units).

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