Now that we’ve got a truly mass market electric car in the US (the 13th best selling car in the country in the first quarter of 2019 and the best selling luxury car), I’ve found it interesting to take a closer look at changes in all automakers’ overall car and automobile sales. I meticulously track changes from month to month and quarter to quarter using automaker sales reports for this purpose.
Tesla had the #1 top selling luxury car in the USA in the first quarter of 2019, but it didn’t win the title of top selling luxury car producer in the first quarter and also didn’t top the list of luxury automakers (cars + SUVs/CUVs/trucks). However, the Silicon Valley company did stay on the podium despite a 50% cut in the federal EV tax credit for Tesla buyers and despite the fact that most Tesla vehicles were shipped abroad (with the Model 3 making it overseas for the first time).
The electric car story of the year — nay, the car story of the year — was the Tesla Model 3 taking the industry by storm. Just as we were predicting 3 or 4 years ago, Tesla’s ability to ramp up production of a more affordable, more mass market model is sending chills down other automakers’ spines — or it should be. I’ll revise a famous old quote to explain the ongoing story in a different way:
GM says it will have 20 plug-in hybrid or battery electric models for sale to Chinese customers by 2023. Meanwhile in the US, it rails against fuel economy standards and continues to push pickups. Can you say “two faced,” boys and girls?
News from the Beijing auto show this week includes electric SUV concepts from BYD, BMW, and Buick.
GM is now aiming to sell 150,000 “new energy vehicles” a year by 2020, and 500,000 a year by 2025 — as revealed at a recent 20th anniversary of the company’s launch of its first two joint ventures in China with SAIC.
In an interesting bit of news, it’s been revealed that the 2018 Buick LaCrosse will feature the firm’s eAssist mild-hybrid (light-electrification) system as standard when it goes on sale this autumn. This system will reportedly (when coupled with the 4-cylinder engine option) result in a 19% increase to city fuel economy (as compared to the V6) — as a result of the 86V lithium-ion battery pack allowing for effective regenerative braking.
The Chevrolet Bolt is off to a respectable start in terms of US sales, but will it become America’s top-selling green car? In “12 Factors That Will Limit Chevy Bolt Sales In The US (Part 1),” I offered up the first 6 factors that will unfortunately limit the Bolt’s sales, preventing it from coming close to those achieved by the Toyota Prius at its height of popularity. In this article, I close out my case with 6 more factors.
A rebranded (and notably modified) version of the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid (PHEV) known as the Buick Velite 5 has been revealed in concert with the Shanghai Auto Show, as expected.
Something that seems to often be a bit of a surprise to some of those in the US is that the Buick brand is quite well regarded in China. As a result, GM often sells its vehicles under that brand in the Chinese market even if the model is sold under a different name here in the US.
