Honda and Toyota have been smart, logical choices for American car buyers for decades. Once upon a time, they were the new kids on the block and they had to prove themselves with strong “performance for the money” or “value for the money” propositions. They did so, repeatedly, and they grew their market shares as a result.
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.
In the comments of my article about the Tesla Model 3 accounting for 67% of US electric vehicle sales in the second quarter, someone asked about the electric vehicle share of the overall market. I didn’t find second quarter (Q2) sales data anywhere, but I did quickly identify sales data for the first half of the year.
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).
The US is heading for a down year in auto sales. The only bright spot is Tesla. So why is everyone bashing the one company that is succeeding at building US-made cars with American workers?
A recent article in Forbes highlighted that J.D. Power and LMC Automotive have found “a growing backlog of unsold new cars and trucks” across the country. The reason? Sales are down.
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.
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.
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.
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%
