US Electric Car Sales Up 59% In January 2017

February 4th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

Originally published on EV Obsession. See our Electric Car Sales page for a deeper look at US, European, and Chinese electric car sales.

US electric car sales continue to climb to new heights in 2017. Growing 59% year over year (YoY), approximately 12,000 electric cars were sold across the country in January, accounting for approximately 1% of US auto sales.

The top five models accounted for approximately 40% of total US electric car sales, as most models are still compliance cars that are not designed or marketed to really pull in buyers — and aren’t even available in most states.

Essentially, Tesla and GM are pulling the market forward. The Toyota Prius Prime, though, is a top-of-the-line Prius that is fairly widely available, is building off of the popular Prius name and reputation, and is genuinely cost-competitive with (a better deal than) a conventional Prius — especially once you take the US federal tax credit into account.

The Nissan LEAF — introduced all the way back in 2011 — is still hanging in well above the crowd as well, though. Again, its success relative to other models is quite simply due to its wide availability, the fact that it was designed to be a competitive electric car from the ground up, and some decent marketing/promotion.

Most of the remaining models on the market are hard to find outside of California and Oregon, which makes any evaluation of the “US” EV market still a bit odd. Can you imagine how the Ford F-150 would do if it were only offered in one or two states?

The chart above and tables below provide plenty of information to examine and ponder, but here are some bullet-point highlights as well:

Electric car sales of all types (fully electric cars and plug-in hybrid electric cars) were up 59% YoY.

Plug-in hybrid sales were up 86% YoY.

Fully electric car sales were up 41% YoY.

The Chevy Volt saw a 62% YoY sales increase, and accounted for ~8% of US electric car sales.

The Tesla Model S and Model X accounted for 10% and 8% of US electric car sales (respectively), according to our estimates.

The Chevy Bolt is hopefully still very production limited, as ~1200 monthly sales is well below expectations. Given limited geographic availability, though, it seems most logical that the model is still heavily production limited for some reason — such as lack of battery supply.

EV Model January Audi A3 e-tron 387 BMW 330e 129 BMW 740e 18 BMW i3 382 BMW i8 50 BMW X5 xDrive40e 262 Cadillac ELR 3 Chevy Bolt 1162 Chevy Spark EV 4 Chevy Volt 1611 Ford C-Max Energi 473 Ford Focus Electric 56 Ford Fusion Energi 606 Kia Soul EV 117 Mercedes B250e 53 Mercedes C350e 210 Mercedes GLE550e 52 Mercedes S550e 55 Mitsubishi i 0 Nissan Leaf 772 Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid 177 Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid 2 Smart ED 15 Tesla Model S (est.) 1900 Tesla Model X (est.) 1500 Toyota Prius Prime 1366 Volvo XC90 T8 96 Volkswagen e-Golf 332 All EVs Total 11256 100% Electric Total 6293 PHEV Total 4963 US Car Sales 1,147,557 Electric % of US Sales 0.98%











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