First of all, let’s get the obvious but important note out of the way: I don’t actually know how many Tesla Model 3’s were produced and delivered in January, nor do I know the numbers for the Model S or Model X. That said, the estimates (especially for the Model S and Model X) are based on many pieces of information, including previous guidance from Tesla, and I’ve seldom felt a need to go back and revise monthly estimates once official Tesla numbers have come out. That said, even Tesla’s official numbers don’t indicate US sales (Tesla only releases global sales numbers) and statements about regional split have been few and vague in the past year or two. Of course, in the case of the Model 3, I will probably revise my figures if Tesla shares January Model 3 deliveries soon, and sales could easily be +/- 1000. Nonetheless, the general points of this month’s US electric car sales report would be the same even if Model 3 deliveries totaled 2,000, and the general point is expected to get more obvious in the coming months, so read on.
[Update: Word on the street is that Model 3 production may have hit more snags in January than expected, and the delivery total might have been closer to 1,500 than 3,000. I’ll wait for something official from Tesla to update the chart and table. As noted above, though, the overall story is the same — and check back in again in March and April.]
Looking at the US sales of top electric cars (including plug-in hybrids), one thing stands out in January: Tesla dominates. This is unlikely to change anytime soon. Though, hopefully Nissan LEAF sales surge with the new version and hopefully Bolt, Volt, and Prius Prime sales rise higher than they did by the end of 2017. There are a couple of other plug-in hybrids with moderate sales, based on what InsideEVs somehow gathers (the companies don’t publish these figures), but until those automakers decide it’s worth their time to share plug-in sales with the public, I don’t think I will spend extra time and text on them.
One summary conclusion might be that Tesla is just awesome. But the much more important and convincing conclusion that comes to my mind is: large automakers aren’t even trying.
→ Related: 50 Tips For Slowing The Electric Car Revolution
GM, the 2017 leader among Big Auto, couldn’t get more and 1,177 people to buy the Bolt or couldn’t produce more than that many Bolts after over one year of production — really? That’s the extent of their ability to generate consumer demand or grow production capacity for January 2018?
And that’s the top of the pack. The Nissan LEAF, of course, is in transition — but let’s be honest, how many people would absolutely slam Tesla if it went a few months between model years of one of its vehicles without the ability to sell more than 100 or so of them? How would the market respond if a more popular gasoline model had such a period of limbo? Even so, the LEAF’s absurdly low numbers are now on par with Volkswagen e-Golf sales and Audi A3 e-tron sales — indicating just how poorly their electric efforts are going … or just how effectively their efforts to comply with California regulations without increasing electric car demand are going.
Audi’s A3 e-tron and Volkswagen’s e-Golf are basically turning into a joke. They are being sold to a rather tiny number of buyers (almost entirely in California, I presume) because they either aren’t competitive with the options consumers are cross-shopping (like the Tesla Model 3, Nissan LEAF, and Volkswagen Golf), consumers aren’t really aware of them, and/or the automakers aren’t actually willing and able to produce decent numbers of them. In most markets, these models aren’t available at all.
Big Auto is trying so little to market electric vehicles and get production capacity up to scale that I have to say I’m feeling more frustrated with them now than 4 years ago. As Court aptly said, they’re giving Tesla a free pass — which, as much as many critics of Tesla “fanboys” don’t seem to get, is not what we want. Like Elon Musk himself, we want Big Auto to compete, want there to be choice on the market, want more genuine effort to transition to clean, zero-emissions, instant-torque, domestic-energy electric vehicles.
I’ve long thought BMW had some of the best potential to electrify, and faced some of the most dangerous loss in market share if it didn’t, so I was disappointed when it went the way of plug-in hybrids with tiny batteries (taking away much of the benefit of electric cars) instead of bringing to market more genuine from-the-ground-up electric cars. Even so, it has potential with this approach if it pushes it — and the company will hopefully transition to greater and greater electrification in the next 3–5 years. From BMW’s own sales press release: “Most notably, the new BMW 5 Series showed strong growth for the seventh straight month, with 2,456 vehicles sold – nearly 10 percent of which were the BMW 530e iPerformance plug-in hybrid electric variant.” That’s right, the fairly fresh BMW 530e is approaching 10% of model sales (compared to ~1% market share that all plug-in cars have on the US market). Imagine if the 530e was available in more than the limited markets where I’m seeing it. Imagine if BMW really marketed the electric benefits. Imagine if BMW had an i5 on the market that embarrassed the 5-Series.
The next line of BMW’s press release: “The all-new BMW X3, which came to market in November, also performed well with 2,954 vehicles sold.” Hey, cool, and where’s the electric X3?
Again, I’m highlighting BMW not because it’s at the back of the pack but because it’s actually an electric car “leader.” Other automakers have even fewer available models, do an even poorer job of marketing the electric benefits, and seem even less committed to electrifying their popular models. BMW electrified vehicles are actually above 5% of the company’s total US sales — best on the US market aside from Tesla. The company proudly adds: “Electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles sales totaled 1,145 vehicles, accounting for 5.2 percent of BMW Group vehicles sales in January. BMW currently offers six electrified models in the U.S., including the BMW i3 and BMW i8, as well as the BMW i Performance models: BMW 330e, BMW 530e, BMW 740e and the BMW X5 xDrive 40e. MINI offers the MINI Countryman plug-in-hybrid electric vehicle.”
With just 22,000 BMW Group sales in January, Tesla could potentially pass BMW this year (assuming nearly 20,000 Model 3’s producer per month at some point + a couple thousand sales each of the Model S and Model X). That seems like a daunting nightmare for BMW, but imagine if the German giant — one of the most valuable car companies in the world — created a fully electric sub-brand that was 100% committed to electrification, partnered with Tesla on the Supercharger network, and could stimulate the hot new brand appeal Tesla has stimulated while leaving the old-timer appeal of BMW to a different demographic.
By and large, I’d say that Tesla fans want to see Big Auto sell as many electric cars as Tesla — or more! Our criticism of Big Auto and exclamation of Tesla’s competitive advantages doesn’t come from a point of “Tesla fanboyism” as much as they come from a wish that Big Auto would actually try. Until then, aside from a corporate mission or morals preference, it’s just hard to give them business looking at the products on offer and how much they pull out an electric car’s potential while addressing an electric car’s few remaining weaknesses.
In the end, of 17 top electrified models, Tesla’s three models appeared to represent approximately 58% of January sales (give or take 10%). I’d love to see the Bolt climb to 5,000–10,000 sales a month, would love to see the new LEAF hit such figures, would love to see BMW’s electrified offerings hitting 50% of BMW Group sales, but it’s just hard to imagine any of that happening.
Also published on EV Obsession’s Electric Car Sales page.
February 3rd, 2018 by Court Nederveld Originally published on EV Obsession.
Has Tesla Received A Free Pass?
Five years ago, electric-powered vehicles began to make an appearance. Nissan and Tesla proceeded along two entirely different approaches to converting buyers from ICE vehicles to electric-powered vehicles. Nissan added the Leaf on top of its ICE vehicle lineup and Tesla was all in with its electric Model S. Other legacy manufacturers added small numbers of electric compliance cars to meet state requirements. Where is the free pass?
Here is where the narrative gets interesting. As these cars began to make appearances across the nation, the descriptions by critics always mentioned words like small, slow, short range, long charging times, range anxiety, cost, lack of a dealership support network, city car, good second car, no charging infrastructure, and battery life. But interestingly, many articles in parentheses used the words except Tesla.
2017, The Year Mattered
So what happened in 2017? What leads one to believe that Tesla has been given a free pass by legacy manufacturers and their proxies, the dealerships? There are also several startups such as Fisker, Rivian, and others not quite to the playing field yet. Following Tesla’s business model, not GM’s, they will benefit from that pass as well.
Lawsuits by dealerships to prevent sales of Tesla vehicles at the state level are being resolved in Tesla’s favor. These will continue, but as Jim Ziegler, president of Ziegler Supersystems, said in an opinion piece in auto-industry trade journal Ward’s Auto:
We can keep Tesla busy defending what are basically nuisance suits. But it will prevail in all states one at a time. Or there will be some sort of sweeping federal action in its favor.
Charging infrastructure is a game changerand not one legacy manufacturer has stepped up to the plate. Tesla is energizing superchargers at a rate approaching 12 a day. The rest of the field is counting on public or private parties to install chargers for them. GM’s CEO, Mary Barra:
We are not actively working on providing infrastructure [for the Bolt EV].
Match Or Beat These Points To Win
The list continues: who builds not only the fastest electric cars but the fastest production cars on the planet? Tesla. Who is the only manufacturer to build full-size electric sedans? Tesla. Who has figured out how to end long charging times? Tesla. Who builds an electric car that can easily and conveniently travel coast to coast? Tesla. While this may be subjective, who builds sexy electric cars? Tesla. Who had a 39% sales increase in 2017? Tesla. Who has the free pass?
The Free Pass
Here is the final supporting points to the premise that Tesla has been given a free pass. Ford CEO (at the time) Mark Fields:
We have driven the Model S, torn it down, put it back together, and driven it again. We’re very familiar with that product.
Mercedes, BMW, Audi, GM, Ford, and Volkswagen all have reverse engineered Tesla vehicles. The technology is known, the patents are open source, there is nothing about the cars that are magic or undecipherable. GM even took on the Model 3, beating it to market with the Bolt by an entire year. Or did they? Mary Barra CEO GM said:
We are not capital constrained in our EV or AV development.
General Motors, with unlimited funding, unlimited manufacturing capacity, unlimited talent, supplier network unrivaled, nationwide dealership network, and unlimited advertising budget, starts with a clean white sheet and delivers the Bolt. Every old canard about electric vehicles was designed into it except one, range. All of the other anti-EV talking points remained available for the media to jump on. Why? Was it to not upset Tesla? Give Tesla a free pass? Or was it to protect their ICE market by producing a car that would achieve the ZEV credits needed to continue selling SUVs and trucks? This from Elon Musk:
But the CARB credits are only effective at a production rate of about 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles a year. So that’s why you’ll see, mark my words, it’s not going to be any higher than that for the Chevy Bolt. That’s on order of 25,000 units a year…
Coincidence? Please say it isn’t so. Total Bolt sales for 2017 … 23,297.
In Truth Is There No Beauty?
There may be no hope for the legacy vehicle manufacturers. Research firm KPMG released its annual automotive executive survey, and more than half (62%) of global auto executives say they believe these [electric] vehicles will fail commercially. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV CEO Sergio Marchionne said at the Detroit Auto Show the only reason Fiat Chrysler makes any electric vehicles are to comply with government regulations. Virtually all manufactures put out regular press releases about how much money they WILL spend on electrification. On the street, it seems like it’s nothing but vaporware.
You Can Never Go Home Again
Look at pictures of China, India, and Mexico City and there is no path that I can see that would convince them to reverse course and encourage fossil fuel vehicles.
Hydrogen fuel cells work, but the infrastructure costs far more in money and energy than a fuel cell receives. California, another thorn in the legacy manufacturer’s side, would probably secede from the union before reversing course.
If I Only Had A Crystal Ball
I’m not a stock aficionado and don’t pretend to be one. I’m one that buys high and sells low. I’ve never seen a company like Tesla that not only is the leader in their market, has amazing growth potential, and appears to have implicit permission from potential and powerful competitors to make, shape, and own the EV market. Literally, a free pass. Hmmm…
