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.
First, it was some kind of flu in China.
Then, the coronavirus quickly spread across the world, being recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020.
In country after country, lockdown measures started to get enforced, with travel restrictions, school closures, and more measures put into place.
If you had asked me 4 months ago if 1st quarter US auto sales would be down 495,732, nearly half a million units, in the quarter as a whole compared to the 1st quarter of 2019, I’d think you were crazy.
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.
A little while after I published articles about Tesla’s US 1st quarter sales earlier this month, I discovered that our estimates for foreign sales had been too pessimistic. Sales abroad were much higher in the 1st quarter than we initially thought — most notably, in Europe, South Korea, and China. That meant that US Tesla sales estimates were too high.
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).
The Tesla Model 3 continued to hog the throne on top of the US premium-class car market at the end of 2019. For the full year, the Model 3 accounted for 23% of small and midsize luxury car sales. In other words, nearly 1 out of every 4 small or midsize luxury cars sold in 2019 was a Tesla Model 3.
The US auto industry took a bit of a whack in 2019. Excluding Tesla, auto sales were down by 177,839 units in 2019 compared to 2018. That said, only 13 auto brands saw their sales drop, while 18 saw their sales rise.
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 primarily cover the electric vehicle market here on CleanTechnica. However, context is important and that means sometimes looking at the broader automobile market. Therefore, I collect US auto sales data from almost all automakers on a monthly basis and take a look at their sales trends. I also split out car/sedan sales data for these automakers since the dominant, mass-market electric vehicle currently on the market is a car (the Tesla Model 3).
