Tesla Sales Higher Than Acura, Audi, BMW Car, Infiniti, Jaguar, Lexus Car, & Mercedes Car Sales In USA (August Sales)

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Let’s just start with some numbers. Below are USA sales totals for the month of August from several top luxury car brands. Additionally, I’ve included estimates for Tesla’s USA sales and Tesla’s USA car sales (the latter of which excludes the Model X). While we don’t have precise numbers from Tesla, there is now confirmation from CEO Elon Musk that there were more Tesla Model 3 sales in the USA in August than BMW car sales (excluding SUVs). That means that Tesla sold more cars than any other luxury car brand (again, that excludes SUVs from some brands — Lexus, BMW, and perhaps Mercedes-Benz).

Brand
August 2018 Sales
Acura 15,072
Audi 20,907
BMW 23,789
BMW Cars 14,450
Infiniti 10,796
Jaguar Land Rover 9,648
Lexus 28,622
Lexus Cars 8,926
Mercedes-Benz 20,339
Mercedes-Benz Cars 8,806
Tesla (estimate) 21,000
Tesla Cars (estimate) 19,000

To be clear, our sales estimate for all Tesla vehicles is 21,000 due to an estimate of 17,000 deliveries of the Model 3 and 4,000 deliveries of the Model S and Model X (approximately 2,000 each).

As you can see, that means that Tesla, a company that has been mass producing cars for barely more than 6 years, is already seeing more USA car sales than BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Acura, Infiniti, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lexus.

This is rather shocking — even to me. Of course, we saw it coming and I predicted two weeks ago that Tesla would pass BMW car sales in the country. However, stepping back for a moment and realizing that Tesla is a 15 year old company that started producing the Model S just 6 years ago is just mind-blowing.

Tesla CEO & Chairman Elon Musk is being attacked left and right these days for short retorts and big proposals passed to the world via Twitter. What is getting much less attention in the mainstream media — or no attention — is that Tesla just passed up century-old legacy automakers in terms of USA sales. What is not being explained is that Tesla’s “extreme manufacturing” approach, despite coming with some challenges, has enabled Tesla to go from selling almost no cars in 2012 to selling approximately 25,000 cars a month today (with ~21,000 of those being in the USA until the company starts shipping Model 3s to Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East).

Here at CleanTechnica, we’ve started tracking Tesla headlines in the mainstream media. This week so far, out of 63 headlines, we’ve found that 43 insinuate something negative about Tesla while only 9 offer positive implications for the company. Furthermore, there is not yet a single positive headline about Tesla sales.

That’s right — following a month in which Tesla, shockingly, sold more cars in the USA than BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Acura, Audi, Infiniti, or Jaguar, not a single mainstream media outlet is highlighting this insane accomplishment.

Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one if daily is too frequent.
Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

CleanTechnica's Comment Policy


Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

Zachary Shahan has 7764 posts and counting. See all posts by Zachary Shahan