The Audi e-tron just scored a new quarterly sales record in the United States. Before you get too excited about the news, though, recognize that the US market is nothing like the European market for the electric SUV from Germany. This new quarterly record? 3,474 units.
With ~13 weeks in the first quarter of the year, the Tesla Model Y is estimated to have had 3,308 US deliveries a week. It appears to have had more than 12 times as many sales as the Audi e-tron.
It’s great to hear of another record sales quarter for an electric vehicle, but it’s just a tad depressing to then see how low the record total is.
You can add in the new e-tron Sportback’s sales, 850, and get to 4,324 for the two e-tron options combined. Still, it then only beats one fossil-fueled SUV model from Audi, the large and expensive Q8.
The brand’s top selling Q5, for comparison, had 14,731 sales in the first quarter. The e-tron, or another Audi electric SUV/crossover, has a long way to go to start averting significant numbers of fossil-fueled SUV sales.
I 100% just want to see electric vehicles scoring high sales and displacing fossil-fueled vehicles. When I saw news of record e-tron sales, I got excited for a few moments. Then I discovered that the total was so low.
Yes, you’ve got to start somewhere, and the good news is that the sales figures and records are going in the right direction. We’ll keep an eye on things. In the meantime, hopefully we’ll see some more notable efforts from Audi in the USA soon.
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