Chevrolet Nearly Doubles the Share of Its Sales Coming from BEVs
Chevrolet has added two semi-mass-market electric vehicles to its fleet in the past year, the Chevy Blazer EV and the Chevy Equinox EV. Unfortunately, the brand also took the semi-popular Chevy Bolt off the market. Just looking at these three models, the net effect in the 3rd quarter of 2024 compared to the 3rd quarter of 2023 is just a slight increase in EV sales. However, one more model provided another boost in BEV sales for Chevrolet — but I’ll come back to that in a moment.
The Chevy Bolt EV/EUV dropped from 15,835 sales to 168 sales, while the Chevy Blazer EV grew from 19 sales to 7,998 sales and the Chevy Equinox EV grew from nothing to 9,772 sales. In net, that was an increase of 2,103 EV sales.
Was it a good idea to drop the Bolt and roll in two new EVs to essentially do the same job? Well, that debate could rage on and on, but sometimes it’s time to move on from one old stale model to a new fresh one, or two. I expect we’ll see Equinox EV and Blazer EV sales continue to rise in coming quarter. There’s also murmuring that GM will even revive the Bolt at some point to provide another surge of interest and a new life to the historic model (the model was the first long-range affordable EV in the United States). I do wonder, though, if GM had continued producing the Chevy Bolt while also adding the Blazer EV and Equinox EV how much more of an overall sales bump the company could have gotten.
Aside from these models, the previously discussed Cadillac LYRIQ has become a hot hit from GM, as I wrote a few hours ago. Also, you’ve got the Chevy Silverado EV pickup truck now. The Silverado EV had 1,995 sales in the third quarter, up from the 18 initial sales of Q3 2023.
Together, all of this shows notable growth in Chevrolet’s EV sales compared to its gas-powered vehicle sales. Full battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) became 4.7% of Chevrolet’s total sales in the third quarter, which is significantly up from the 2.5% share BEVs had of Chevrolet sales in the previous quarter, the second quarter of 2024. That’s solid improvement, almost a doubling of BEVs’ share. It’s similar to what we just saw from Nissan in the third quarter as well. Nissan went from 3.2% BEV share to 5.1% BEV share from the second quarter to the third. With these lower-priced, mass-market brands seeing a significant rise in BEV share, even if luxury brands like Cadillac hold steady on their BEV share, I assume we’re going to see a new record in BEV share of the overall auto market. Of course, a lot of that will also depend on how Tesla does, since Tesla still accounts for about 50% of the overall BEV market in the US. However, these changes also follow the broader trend of more auto brands and models expanding the BEV market in the country and making it less reliant on one brand and just a few models. I’m eager to get all of the 3rd quarter auto sales numbers in to see where BEV share ended up. Could we get to 10%?
Naturally, as I wrote with regard to Nissan, while it’s great to see Chevrolet nearly doubling the share of its sales that are electric, other brands are showing that it should be able to do much better. Cadillac is already at 19% BEV share, BMW is at 15%, Genesis is at 13%, Audi is at 11%, MINI is at 11%, Mercedes is at 10%, Kia is at 9%, and Hyundai is at 8%. Progress is progress, but we’d love to see a lot more BEV progress in coming quarters.
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