I’ve been reporting monthly US electric car sales for years. My monthly report has often been one of the most popular stories of the month here on CleanTechnica. However, unless something changes, I’ve concluded it’s time to stop — or to take a break — from these US EV sales reports. There are 4 core reasons why.
A surprising look at online cruising regarding electric vehicles caught my eye. It’s a colorful map revealing the electric car interests of people in different states. The map shows the searches people in different states most frequently conduct for specific electric car models.
Let’s get the biggest matter out of the way right off the bat: no one outside of Tesla really has a clue as to how many Model 3s were delivered in the US in each month of Q2. Yes, we have a Model 3 delivery total from Tesla for the quarter as a whole, but the company doesn’t break that down by month or region. For a while, the slowly growing ramp allowed us to estimate without too much difficulty, but a few things changed in May and June.
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.
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.
Last year, we surveyed readers here to get your 2017 electric car sales projections for the year. How did things turn out? Take a look below. But in addition to checking out the 2017 results, it’s time for 2018 projections as well!
With Tesla’s slower than expected Model 3 production ramp, the electric star of 2017 (in many respects) didn’t shine very brightly on the sales spreadsheet. In fact, it came in just below the Ford Focus Electric on the year-end sales tally. However, it’s two older siblings — the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X — appear to have led US electric car sales*.
Here’s an overview of the 20 most compelling plug-in hybrid electric vehicles now available for purchase in the USA.
A joint study by the highly respected Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research finds that plug-in hybrid cars with at least 36 miles of electric-only range (think Chevy Volt) are just as good at keeping carbon emissions out of the atmosphere as pure battery electric cars (think Chevy Bolt).
The big electric car sales story again in November was that Chevy Bolt sales rose again, and took the #1 spot again.
The next tier was Tesla’s showroom — the Model S and Model X — based on my estimates for the month*.
