There was solid growth in 2014 for plugins. Total sales were 320,000 cars of which the Leaf did 60,000, Outlander and Model S each did 32,000 units. The remaining sales were scattered on over 20 models doing at most 20,000 units. The Model S and the Outlander are still the only plugins that are still supply restricted. Tesla should be able to raise production to at least 50,000 units for 2015 and so may Mitsubishi. Nissan will get more competition from other plugin sellers that are now expanding their distribution networks so they will in my opinion have a hard time maintaining their 60,000 unit sales for 2015. The new Volt will be selling well in 2015 especially if the price is maintained or lowered.

http://ev-sales.blogspot.dk/

Overall plugin sales will grow again in 2015 because there is more choice than ever and the lineup is getting better. But probably not more than 400,000 units globally for all of 2015. This is not bad considering it all started from zero units in 2011 with the Volt and it takes 5 years to develop a new car model. Also global sales of hybrids is less than 1.5 million units. I expect the plugin market to grow slowly each year by 20% or so until 2018 when Tesla, GM and Nissan are launching their first 200 plus miles cars at about 40k USD. After that the market will grow much faster and be limited to how fast other 50Gwh factories can be build. Tesla and Nissan will have volume production for batteries for their 200 plus miles cars at 40,000 USD in 2018 but I do not see GM or any other having it at that time. So even though others may introduce 200 miles plus cars at 40k USD in 2018 they will not have much capacity to build these cars. I think that most car makers have very recently decided that they need to develop a 200 miles BEV in the 40k USD segment. However, a decision to build volume capacity to make them will not be made until after Tesla and Nissan proves that there is a large global market for such cars (over 500,000 units per year). That will not happen until 2020 and after that it will take about 3 years to build each new 50Ghw factories (it will take more time than usual because you also need to significantly raise global mining of lithium carbonate and that takes time).

In my opinion when the 40k USD, 200 plus miles BEVs cars become available they will quickly erode the market for nearly equally expensive range extended plug-ins that are still polluting and unsustainable.

I wonder where all the savings are for the BEV? They have fewer parts, no exhaust and yet they want more than the gas powered counterparts.

@Henrik
I think the 40k USD, 200 plus miles BEVs will be met with new gas engines that will get 60mpg and cost a mere 20K USD starting. As the 2014/2015 cars get better MPG use of these cars will lessen the demand for oil and gas prices will continue to stay low.
Plus you can drive them 1000 miles without having to wait for a recharge.
Its hard for a new tech to overcome the old infrastructure.
I am ALL for BEV but CMON why is the cost still so high?

Some people say YOU should buy a BEV, but THEY have no plans to buy one. I have read comments from people who own LEAF cars, they started at 70 mile range and after 3 years are down to 50 miles, they are NOT happy.

I think EV batteries will come down to the $100 kWh this decade. The one observation I have is Tesla uses 7000+ cylindrical cells and others use 192 prismatic cells. Less cells seems better to me.

I think they should phase out HEVs, and focus on PHEVs with setups comparable to the Volt, there is no reason not to have a PHEV in a midsize and up... especially since higher kwh / $ batteries prices are falling down rapidly. Performance may be an issue, but like the Volt and Tesla Model S, it can be overcome by throwing more cells at it (which is pretty cost effective it appears).

Car companies need to take risks on larger vehicles, being about PHEVs for something more than a B-C Class vehicle. I'll try and keep my 2002 vehicle until such a thing happens (I am hoping by 2017 as my car is getting older the problems are starting to mount.)

Even after such a long life on my vehicle, the powertrain is fine on my car, I think that BEVs have to work on their long term usefulness as SJC pointed out with certain first gen BEVs. Its not like ICEVs where you could spend 50-100 for someone to change out plugs and wires and get returned to almost like new performance. I think that FCEVs, PHEVs and ICEs appeal in this way to me and a lot of other people.

A PHEV kind of makes battery performance a non-issue, the gas generator is always there if you need it.

Its like the current generation of cell phones, we are at the point where hardware is practically more than good enough, I mean I have a quad core chipset clocked at 2.2ghz with 2GB of ram on a phone! I probably don't need any upgrade in that regard over the next 5-8 years(with what I use one for), what I almost assuredly will need is a new battery in that time. This is the stigma car companies are going up against with BEVs.

The batteries for a 60 kWh BEV could make ten 6 kWh PHEVs or sixty 1 kWh HEVs. Think of the MPGe for a BEV and the MPGe for a PHEV or HEV. If we want to save fuel, have less pollution with less imported oil, the more PHEVs and HEVs out there the better.

Do not forget that we live in a market economy where the consumers rule. The consumers want more Model S and Outlanders. They do not appear to want much more of anything else on the market at current prices. So even if you could make ten 8.5kwh batteries out of one 85kwh Model S pack (which you can't as it is an entirely different battery chemistry needed for the two applications: Long-rang BEV and short range PHEV) it may not result in more sales. The Prius plugin shows that there is very little demand for plugins with very short EV range. The new Volt should do better with a 50 miles range and when Nissan launch their 200 miles plus Leaf they will also be able to sell a lot more than the 60k units they sold in 2014 of their short range Leaf. My interpretation of the success of the Model S and the Outlander is that better range and bigger cars are selling whereas the opposite is not.

The approximately 5 million cars that are sold globally each year and that cost over 40,000 USD is ready to go plugin by a very high percentage if you can offer good EV range, size, power and handling. Trying to sell BEVs and PHEVs in the sub 40,000 USD market is going to be infinitely harder because you need to go short range or small to cut the cost and people do not want that in that segment when they can get a much better gasser for the same price.

CE88, your typical electric stove circuit is rated at 240 VAC 50 A.  De-rated to 40 A, that is sufficient to charge a Tesla Model P85 in less than 9 hours.  Using the vehicle in V2G mode for grid regulation (charging only) during the day would extend range substantially even if the circuit was only 120 VAC 12 A.

This PHEV driver has cut fuel consumption by roughly 3/4 over the base ICE model.  I estimate $1800 in savings thus far.  We'll see what happens as the oil price war shakes out.