I may need to cancel my fun, popular, and extremely time consuming monthly reports for US auto sales. One by one, US automakers have stopped publishing monthly sales data. At this point, there are almost as many brands not reporting sales as there are reporting them.
We won’t have US sales figures for Tesla, Ford, and GM for another month — and even then we’ll have to estimate how they were split out across the quarter — but we know one thing for sure: Tesla’s sales are up heavily compared to the same period in 2018. For other automakers, not so much.
There are a lot of anonymous and a few non-anonymous anti-Tesla trolls on the internet. Whether they are connected to the oil industry, work for traditional auto companies, or simply picked up an odd prejudice against clean electric cars, they seem to be obsessed with Tesla articles, to the point that they have to comment on hundreds of those articles despite not liking the company. One of the favorite tools of the Tesla smear is calling people who recognize the benefits of Tesla vehicles “fanboys” (often with the implication that they’re idiots and have no good reason to be “fanboys”).
It’s time for another monthly checkup on US auto sales. Surprisingly, more than a million people are still buying the 21st century equivalent of horses every month. I think the most interesting takeaway, though, is quickly running through the companies and car divisions that saw their sales drop last month (compared to the same month in 2018) and then the companies and car divisions that saw their sales rise.
In the first quarter of 2019, the Tesla Model 3 was again the #1 top selling car in the US luxury car market. It was far and away the winner. It was actually #13 in the overall US car market, and no other premium-class car even made the top 20.
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).
In the month of February, these luxury auto companies and car divisions had the following sales drops:
Acura Cars: −12%
Audi: −12%
Audi Cars: −12%
BMW Cars: −12%
Infiniti: −17%
Infiniti: −46%
Lexus Cars: −2%
Mercedes-Benz: −13%
Mercedes-Benz Cars: −4%
Volvo Cars: −77%
I recently ran a Twitter poll to decide what to write about next. The top article the voters asked me to write was an article on how the Tesla Model Standard Range (SR) competes against models from incumbent auto manufacturers. The wonderful thing is that Tesla is now price competitive, without incentives. It is very competitive on a total cost of ownership basis. With incentives and TCO factored in, the Model 3 is tough to beat.
Let’s take a look.
Some things cannot be explained by numbers. The Tesla Model 3 driving experience is phenomenally better than the driving experience of nearly every other car on the market. That is not hyperbole. Race car drivers have said it, top auto journalists have said it, and hundreds of thousands of other people have said it. You just have to experience the Model 3 to understand it.
