Electric car Delco. These early cars were eventually withdrawn from the U.S. market. California electric automaker Tesla Motors began development in 2004 on what would become the Tesla Roadster (2008), which was first delivered to customers in 2008. The Roadster was the first highway legal serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells, and the first production all-electric car to travel more than per charge. Tesla global sales passed 250,000 units in September 2017. The Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance achieved the milestone of 500,000 units electric vehicles sold in October 2017. Tesla sold its 200,000th Model S in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Plug-in electric vehicles in Norway and vans registered, surpassing the Netherlands, Europe’s top market in 2015. Also, Norway was the first country in the world to have all-electric cars topping the new car sales monthly ranking. From September 2013 to November 2016, nine times a plug-in electric car has topped the country's monthly ranking, four times the Tesla Model S, twice the Nissan Leaf, once the Mitsubishi Outlander P-HEV, once the Tesla Model X, and once the BMW i3. In March 2014, the Tesla Model S also broke the 28-year-old record for monthly sales of a single model regardless of its power source. , the