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I'm Brian Cooley with cnet on cars.
Another top five list on high tech cars and modern driving.
This one, the top five best selling electric cars.
Defining this as calendar year 2015, and any car with a plug.
That means it can be a pure battery electric, or a plug-in hybrid.
Let's go with number five.
And that one this year goes to Ford Fusion Energi.
About 9,700 sold last year.
Down 18 percent from the year before, and by the way it was fifth last year as well.
This car wasn't helped by the fact that some U.S. states moved to end their incentives for ED's in 15.
But make no mistake, Ford's a believer in electrified cars.
They've promised to have 13 of them in their line by 2020.
What do you think about a plug in hybrid Mustang in case the recent turbo four wasn't enough to blow the purist's mind?
Who knows?
[SOUND] Number four, the BMW I3, the baby of their two electric cars, the kinda goofy looking one, not the I8.
Now, it sold about 11,000 copies in 2015.
I can't give you a comparison ranking, cuz this was its first full year of sales, so it entered At number four, pretty good, especially considering this car is very urban.
You don't really own one of these unless you're running around with a copy of Dwell magazine under one arm and a copy of Fair Trade coffee in the other hand.
So starting off at number four with a car that is relatively pigeonholed in terms of style and life style is quite Number three is the Chevy Volt.
Now this was the last year of the first Gem Volt, 2015, sold a little under 16,000 in copies.
Came down quite a bit in sales, about 22%.
And also lost a slot in the rankings, down from last year number two.
And of course, Volt is a plugin hybrid Technically a range extender.
This should be a big year for the Volt because they have an all new model on the market with better range, better driving, better looks, more cabin tech and better interior practicality.
In early 2016, it's all Already emerged as the number one selling plug in car even ahead of Tesla what's going to be more interesting down the road is how this guys fares against its equally new sibling the Chevy Bolt which is a pure plugin batter electric car theres going to be a little cannibalism going Going on there I have to assume.
The question is who's lector and who's the census taker?
[NOISE] Our number two car on the list for 2015 sales is the Nissan Leaf, just talked about this guy in the show.
About 17,000 plus sales in 2015, but down about 75% and lost the coveted number one crown from last year.
Now the Leaf, of course, is a pure plugin Battery electric car.
The Leaf fluttered so far to the ground last year over 2014 for a number of reasons.
First of all a lot of states cut their incentives for electric vehicles.
Georgia is one of the big ones for example.
That was powering a lot of Leaf buyers.
Secondly a bunch of Leafs came off lease.
And are back on the market and Nissan put $5000 on the hood to any of those current owners saying we'll incent you to buy the car you've been leasing.
But, the lease sales drop I think also focuses the fact that it is seen kind of through one prism.
As a fuel saving, pure electric and it doesn't have a lot of other messages.
And that's gonna hurt it in a time when gas prices are stable and/or coming down.
[SOUND] Before I get you to our number one selling electric car of 2015, let's go to the other end of the list and look at some real suckage.
The EVs that sold the worst like the Mitsubishi i-miev.
Yep, they still sell it, but at 115 sold them in all of 2015, who would know?
And the bottom of the bottom, the dead man walking, the Honda Accord plug-in hybrid.
Sold 64 of them total in calendar 2015.
You know you're in trouble when you're out sold by the rare as hen's teeth Porsche 910.
Our number 1 electric car of 2015, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, the Tesla Model S. This guy sold over 25,000 copies in the US, up 51%.
And jumped Two slots in our ranking from the year before.
Pure battery electric car of course, and clearly a home run year for them.
I almost feel bad for putting the Model S in this list to be honest.
It is electric, but boy, it's a whole lot more.
It's got the longest range in the market of course, but then it's got this amazing cabin It's got beautiful styling.
It pushes the envelope on adaptive driving assist and self-driving technology.
And you've got a car here that sells to people who, to be honest, are not fuel price sensitive, and have at least one other car in most cases.
All of these help the Model S And will continue to keep it from being a one note tune as gas prices and various other market forces change, this guy commits to a lot of bases.
Even if a lot of them are occupied by the 2%.
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