On Saturday, I published a new CleanTechnica report showing that US auto sales were down 15% in 2020, whereas Tesla’s US sales were estimated to be up 9%. Only two companies other than Tesla had their US sales increase in 2020 — Volvo and Alfa Romeo, each by 2%. However …
The US auto market took a whipping in 2020. No one knows why. (Oh … yeah … never mind.) Overall, US auto sales were down by 2,592,185, or 15%, last year. Only three automakers saw their year-over-year sales increase from 2019 to 2020
We don’t often cover the day-to-day or even month-to-month stock market frenzy, but there is no doubt that growth in Tesla [TSLA] market cap has been a stunning thing to witness in recent years, and especially in the past year.
As everyone knows, the automobile industry has been slammed in 2020, including in the United States. Below is a look at third quarter auto sales across the country as well as auto sales in the first three quarters of the year.
US auto sales, as we all know by now, took a massive hit in the second quarter of 2020. After collecting the sales data of 31 auto brands (almost all of them), I decided to dig in a little deeper — and further back in time — to try to get a better sense of trends and which companies are facing particularly challenging mid- to long-term circumstances.
A couple of weeks ago, I published a report showing US new auto sales were down 496,600 in the first quarter of 2020 (compared to the first quarter of 2019). That seemed like a stunning, jaw-dropping drop in auto sales. Looking at the global auto sales story, though, the 496,000 drop looks like peanuts. In the same period, new auto sales were down by more than 6 million units globally.
The Tesla Model 3 accounted for approximately 21% of new small & midsize luxury car sales in the USA in the first quarter of 2020*. For some perspective, the BMW 2 Series, 3 Series, 4 Series, and 5 Series together combined for approximately 15% of the segment’s share.
When the car business sneezes, motorcycles catch a cold. That’s an old saying in this business — one that was already old when I first started working at a dealership in 1997 — but it is a saying that, by and large, has held true.
Now, 2020 has rolled around and a bunch more automakers have decided to ditch monthly sales reporting. Nissan (& Infiniti), Jaguar Land Rover, and Volkswagen (including Audi, Porsche, etc.) announced the change with press releases. Others didn’t seem to announce it but just stopped publishing the monthly numbers (Mercedes, BMW, and Toyota).
Last week’s top stories on CleanTechnica included Andy Miles explaining why Tesla vehicles cut pollution rather than causing more pollution, a rundown of how Tesla’s “full stack disruption” sets it apart from the auto crowd, and yet another comparison of the Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model Y.
