The Top-Selling EV in Japan Isn’t a Tesla, But a $13,000 Kei Car
- Nissan, Mitsubishi’s small electric car debuted last year
- Sakura and eK X won Japan’s 2022 Car of the Year award
Nissan Motor Co. Sakura electric vehicles, left and center, and a Mitsubishi Motors Corp. eK X electric vehicles.
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Japanese automakers and car buyers have earned a reputation for being slow to embrace the shift to electric vehicles, but an unlikely domestic winner offers a hint of how EVs can evolve to suit different markets.
Introduced last year, Nissan Motor Co.’s Sakura — jointly developed with Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which sells it as the eK X — is the best-selling EV in Japan this year, data compiled by Bloomberg shows. The models, which jointly won Japan’s Car of the Year award in 2022, account for roughly half of all EV sales in the country, with 35,099 units sold so far this year, data by auto industry groups showed.