Thinking of an Electric Vehicle as your next car? #OracleDV #DataViz helps discover the best seller!

With reservations reaching over 325,000 cars or ~$14 Billion in pre-orders of Tesla's new offering  - Model 3, the car that promises to bring electric impetus to the masses, I decided to jump-in and find out if  the consumer appetite for Plug-in Electric Vehicles was large enough prior to Model 3! I wanted to explore the possibility of reserving one for my family as well :)

Model 3 is Tesla's fourth model after the Roadster, Model S sedan, and Model X crossover. Model 3 starts at $35,000 which puts it within the reach of an average customer. The Model S on the other hand starts at $75,000. With an easy cost of entry, customers have been pouring in with their $1,000 deposits. On March 30, at the unveiling & start of reservations for Model 3, customers were seen in long lines outside Tesla stores throughout the globe to get a piece of the pie, something that we've witnessed only during an Apple product launch. 

I picked up the ongoing challenge ‘What’s your passion?’ and used Oracle Data Visualization with  freely available public data (some info on Electric Vehicle (EV) Manufacturers, EV Models and EV Car Sales in the past 5 years) to help me select our next car (hopefully an Electric one). I was looking forward to make this a fun and useful activity.

Below is what I created in a few minutes:

Insights from this live infographic were really interesting and surprising at the same time:

• Between 2011-2015, about 400K Alternative Fuel Vehicles were sold.
• 28 car models (16 manufacturers) make up the Hybrid Plug-in Electric Vehicles mix. Lot's of options to choose from! 
• Chevrolet and Nissan were the only players in 2011. Ford, Tesla, BMW, Toyota and Tesla entered the market in the last 4 years. 
• Toyota has been literally crushed, Nissan has been trending down steadily, whereas BMW and Tesla's market share has increased significantly.
• BMW nearly doubled their sales in 2015 with the introduction of i3.
• Ford Fusion and Chevrolet Volt were head-to-head with Leaf in terms of 2015 sales figures. 
• Though Leaf dominated the sales in 2013 and 2014, Tesla took away the lion's share in 2015.
• Top 5 contenders: Tesla Model S, Ford Fusion, Chevrolet Volt,  Nissan Leaf, BMW i3

Oracle Data Visualization was a huge help and I got immediate value in understanding the EV Car market with respect to the sales and how each model stacks up. I've narrowed down my options instead of going from dealer-to-dealer for the initial selection.

As next steps, to further refine and decide on a car before visiting the dealer,  I want to dive deeper and compare the top contenders by bringing in additional data such as price, driving range, time to charge, top speed, safety ratings, comfort, tech, safety features, etc., and do a very detailed discovery. 

But that's until I find some time to write Part 2 of this article. Until then...

Hardik Chheda | @hardikchheda | Data Visualization & Analytics Evangelist at Oracle.

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Data visualisation is all about visual exploration of data to find patterns, trends and insights, and finally share & present such insights in the form of stories.

I created the above infographic using Oracle Data Visualization.  Explore the data that you'd like to  - without any barriers. But don’t take my word for it – try it yourself with a 30-day free trial of Oracle Data Visualization

References:

• Data Source
• Oracle Data Visualization

#dataviz #oracledv #datavisualization #analytics