The Tesla Model 3 continues to open up its lead over every other plug-in car on the US market. For all the hype about a slower than projected Model 3 production ramp up, it seems there isn’t another plug-in vehicle that comes within two laps of touching it. It sits at about triple the sales of the #2 Toyota Prius Prime (a plug-in hybrid) and nearly 4 × the sales of all 7 of BMW Group’s plug-in models combined.
When consumers walk into a US car dealership and have a choice of buying either an electric or internal combustion engine (ICE) powered version of the same model, what percentage opt for the BEV or PHEV version? The short answer is 9.8% on average.
Sales of BMW’s electrified vehicles were up strongly in the first quarter of 2018, with China leading the way with more than a 600% increase.
The new 2018 Nissan LEAF has hit a sweet spot of range and price, with its 40kWh battery providing 151 miles of EPA-rated range at a bargain price of $29,995. In many markets, rebates bring this figure down well into the low $20,000s range, making it arguably the most affordable long-range fully electric vehicle.
As I discussed yesterday in a couple of pieces, Tesla Model 3 sales are beginning to look very good compared to gas cars in its class, and they should even give the top selling passenger cars in the United States a run for their money by summertime. I’m probably going to start doing monthly reports on those sales, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing the super fun US electric car sales reports.
Tesla is one of the most popular companies in the US, so why wouldn’t it have one of the most popular cars, right?
At the beginning of the month, Tesla noted that it had gotten Model 3 production up to 2,000 cars a week at the end of March. More recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told CBS that Tesla had produced 2,070 Model 3s in the week leading up to April 10. If you assume Tesla stalls at approximately 2,000 cars a week for the whole month, that’s still over 8,000 Model 3 electric super-sedans produced in April.
The Tesla Model 3 appears to have been the top selling fully electric car in the United States in the first quarter of 2018. If you believe my estimates (see more on those below), #2 and #3 on the list were the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X.
Here’s our February electric car sales report for the United States, which complements our just-published Europe and China electric car sales reports.
As usual, the report only includes electric cars from Tesla and companies that report their monthly plug-in car sales. Furthermore, the Tesla sales are not official and are based on several Tesla statements, Tesla reports, Tesla forecasts, and broader consumer investigation. This month, I also started crowdsourcing estimates for Model 3 deliveries. My estimate was leaning toward 3,000, but I decided to go with Knetter’s estimate of 3,030 for the report.
I was about to close out the month and get off the computer (at 2:20 am, admittedly), but then something obvious hit me — why not crowdsource the coming Tesla Model 3 delivery estimate for the month of February?
I generally base Tesla delivery estimates for my monthly US electric car sales reports on many factors, but I’ve somehow not previously thought to tap the vast CleanTechnica reader knowledge & speculation base for support.
