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Naturally, we’ve created many US EV sales charts of our own here on CleanTechnica, but there’s a chart I haven’t thought to make that Bloomberg recently created, and it’s a superb chart for some of the claims circling at the moment.
First of all, let’s note that EV sales have continued to grow year over year. A lot of the anti-EV hype has gotten people thinking that EV sales are dropping. In actuality, it’s just the growth that has slowed. Which naturally happens to some degree as a market gets bigger. But it is true it has slowed a lot in the US. That said, the point of the chart shows important nuance in that matter that addresses some side issues and anti-EV claims.
Sales have dropped quite a lot for one notable company. Tesla. And there are a variety of potential reasons for that. There’s the one provided by Tesla: “Decline in volumes was partially due to the early phase of the production ramp of the updated Model 3 at our Fremont factory….” There’s also the fact that Elon Musk’s tweets over the past couple of years have massively dented consumer interest in Teslas from a large portion of the American public.
But this is the point. Despite some moaning and whining and reduced EV sales targets from legacy automakers, they are actually seeing exploding EV sales in the USA! Here’s the graph:
Thanks to longtime CleanTechnica reader Keane Gruending for bringing the graph to my attention.
The demise of #EV sales looks to be a myth according to @bloomberg. Meanwhile closer to home, zero-emissions vehicles are about 30% of all new car sales.https://t.co/2qDCH2hlcT pic.twitter.com/byVZYLjEot
— Keane Gruending (@KeaGru) May 29, 2024
The stats actually come from US auto industry authority Cox Automotive, but Bloomberg was clever to create the visualization and help show the actual story in 2024.
Because Tesla’s sales account for such a large portion of US EV sales, Tesla trends guide overall EV trends. However, this graph shows that, counter to Tesla’s story, Hyundai/Kia, Ford, Toyota, Rivian, Mercedes and BMW all saw great than 50% EV sales growth in the US last quarter!
GM also had a sales drop, which is important since the Chevy Bolt has been one of the country’s best sellers, but GM stopped producing the model and has a gap between it and the company’s next mass-market, affordable electric car — the Chevy Equinox EV. So, there was no way GM’s EV sales could go up, and that was a company decision, not a consumer demand issue. Also note that Cadillac LYRIQ sales were up a ton and 16.4% of Cadillac’s auto sales were electrics last quarter in the US.
In short, while Tesla sales were down due to production matters (production line changes for the new version of the Model 3) and probably also consumer demand matters, and Chevrolet EV sales were down due to the company discontinuing the Chevy Bolt before it ramped up production of the Equinox EV, EV sales otherwise in the US are seeing strong growth. I’m sure Fox News passes along that nuance, though, right?
I’m eager to see Q1 2025 sales. Electric cars continue to get more and more competitive, and I think a big “middle” area of the market is opening up to going electric now. I just talked with someone at the pool the other day who is a very mainstream type of person. She’s interested in going electric. We already know EV adoption is much higher in the major auto markets of China and Europe, and those are going to keep growing there. How long until the US reaches those levels? Who knows? But I think anyone following the EV market closely is more than confident that US EV sales will get there in time, and keep moving upward from there.
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