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US electric vehicle sales increased 15% in the 4th quarter of 2024 over the 4th quarter of 2023. It was pretty good growth for the EV market. Let’s dive in a little further to the details of EV sales in the quarter. We’ll start by looking at sales by model.
The Tesla Model Y and Tesla Model 3 continue to dominate US EV sales. Even if sales are down, no other models are catching them anytime soon.
After that, it was surprising to see the Honda Prologue climbed into 3rd. The Prologue isn’t the most impressive balance between specs and price, but I guess that that shows the strong power of Honda’s brand. Anyway, congrats to Honda on that one.
Then in 4th we’ve got the 2024 CleanTechnica Car of the Year, the Chevy Equinox EV. Without a doubt, this is a great car for the money, and the sales are showing that. One other good thing I’d note about it is I’m now seeing ads for the car frequently. Is Chevrolet really trying to sell an electric car for once???
The Ford Mustang Mach-E rounds out the top 5, and then right behind it is the Hyundai IONIQ 5.
Note that models #3 through #5 there are 3 of the 10 models I pointed out on Friday could be considered competitive with the Tesla Model Y on price and range.
The Tesla Cybertruck still won the electric pickup truck sales award, followed closely by the Ford F-150 Lightning though.
Looking by brand, Tesla took 44.9% of the market. That’s still impressive, of course, but it keeps dropping. It just dropped below 50% in mid 2024 for the first time in about a decade, and it’s down far from a peak of about 80%. But, then again, you’d have to expect that as other automakers started trying to actually sell electric vehicles. Though, Tesla’s sales (not just market share) dropped year over year, whereas the overall EV market was up.
Perhaps surprisingly, Ford came in second place in the 4th quarter, not too far ahead but solidly ahead of #3 Chevrolet. So, even though the Chevrolet Equinox EV has the edge over the Ford Mustang Mach-E in sales, Ford has the overall edge as a brand.
There’s then a significant drop-off from Chevrolet down to #4 Honda(!) and #5 Hyundai. Then you’ve got another gap before the block of #6 Rivian, #7 BMW, and #8 Kia.
Then you get to volumes so low it’s annoying to even report on them.
When we look by at things by auto group, Tesla is still in the same place, of course, but GM takes second place. Interestingly, Ford Motor Co. doesn’t even get third, as Hyundai–Kia come in solidly above it. Honda Motor Co. then closes out the top 5 as it keeps climbing up the ladder.
Looking at perhaps my favorite chart, we can see how much overall EV sales, how much Tesla sales, and how much non-Tesla EV sales grew from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023 to Q4 2024. Unfortunately, the increase from Q4 2023 to Q4 2024 is much smaller than the increase from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023. While Tesla is clearly part of the reason for that, as its sales decreased from Q4 2023 to Q4 2024, you can also see that the growth of non-Tesla EV sales from Q4 2023 to Q4 2024 was notably smaller than the growth from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023.
This is perhaps a more dramatic way to look at the change in sales year over year and compared to Q4 2022.
To wrap up, we’ll look at the changes in sales by model.
The Honda Prologue and Chevy Equinox had strong arrivals onto the market in 2024, and those had gotten especially strong by the 4th quarter. The almost brand new Tesla Cybertruck and the refreshed Tesla Model 3 also did quite well. Then you’ve got the new Chevy Blazer EV before you get to a couple more real year-over-year comparisons, the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and Kia EV9 growing quite well in Q4 2024.
Percentage wise, the Tesla Cybertruck and Chevy Blazer EV benefited from having very few sales in Q4 2023 to land dramatic percentage increases in Q4 2024. Cutting them off the chart, we can see great growth from the Jaguar I-PACE, the Kia EV9, and the Chevy Silverado EV.
We’ll look at 2024 sales as a follow-up and see what was notably different across the full year instead of just the 4th quarter. Stay tuned.
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