USA June 2017

Tesla Model 3, VIN 0000001. Surely the first of millions. And the dawn of a new era.

Waiting for Godot Model 3

The US market registered over 17.000 units, with YoY sales growing 16%, leaving the YTD EV Share north of 1%, the US market is headed for a record year, with December surely surpassing the 250.000 units landmark, and 300.000 units still a possibility.

While the arrival of the most maddly antecipated vehicle since, well...Ever, does not happens, Tesla had its usual last-month-of-quarter peak, winning the top two places, with the Model S (2.350 deliveries) outrunning its baby brother, the Model X (2.200), allowing the older model to recover the US YTD leadership.

Interestingly, this was the slowest peak month since Tesla has two models, while looking only to the Model S performance, it was its worst deliveries month since September 2015, when the Model X was officially launched...Is it a coincidence that now the Model 3 is weeks away from landing, deliveries have slowed down? Probably not, Tesla has now shifted priorities into the smaller model production ramp up, so S and X buyers will probably have to wait a little longer for their high end EVs. 

By the way, did you know that there are other PEVs on sale not named Tesla? Yes, they are not so media and Google friendly, but they (still) make the bulk of sales, among them, there are a couple of interesting points to notice:

- The BMW 330e reached a record 496 deliveries, the same happened with the 530e (239 deliveries), while the X5 PHEV hit a year best performance (488 units), so it seems BMW is opening the production gates for their short range PHEVs;

- The good old Nissan Leaf hit a year best(!), with 1.506 units being sold last month, an impressive feat, considering a much improved version is just months away...

- As the number of states where the problem child Chevrolet Bolt is available increases, the small BEV hits (small) record performances month after month, with the 1.642 being delivered representing its third record in a row. Interestingly, its Volt sibling registered only 1.745 units in June, its worst result since January and down 10% YoY. Is the new kid on the block beggining to hurt the plug-in hybrid model sales? 

In the manufacturers ranking, Tesla (23%, up 2%) has distanced itself from the Second Placed Chevrolet (21%). Looking forward, while Chevrolet will get a (small) boost in sales from the nationwide availability of its Bolt, Tesla should trounce it by year end, once the Model 3 production hit volume numbers.

 The race for Third place is also close, with Ford (12%) resisting (For how long?) Toyota (11%).

Pl	USA	June	YTD	%
1	Tesla Model S e)	2.350	11195	13
2	Chevrolet Volt	1.745	10932	12
3	Toyota Prius Prime	1.619	9.692	11
4	Tesla Model X e)	2.200	8.945	10
5	Chevrolet Bolt	1.642	7.592	9
6	Nissan Leaf	1.506	7.248	8
7	Ford Fusion Energi	707	5.057	6
8	Ford C-Max Energi	936	4.409	5
9 10	Fiat 500e BMW i3	495 567	3.828 2.992	4 3
11	BMW X5 PHEV	488	2.146	2
12	Audi A3 e-Tron	324	2.120	2
13 14 15	Volkswagen e-Golf BMW 330e Hyu. Sonata PHEV	232 496 255	1.887 1.869 1.415	2 2 2
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34	C. Pacifica PHEV Ford Focus electric Por. Cayenne PHEV Kia Soul EV Volvo XC90 PHEV Mercedes S500e BMW 530e Kia Optima PHEV Mercedes B250e BMW 740e Mercedes C350e Mercedes GLE550e BMW i8 Hyundai Ioniq Elec. Smart Fortwo ED Cadillac CT6 PHEV Cadillac ELR Chevr. Spark EV Mini Country. PHEV Others	355 110 195 100 202 81 239 78 46 52 41 22 58 3 20 7 1 10	1.407 1.058 978 836 775 411 399 390 317 303 288 268 220 157 57 42 14 13 10 15	2 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
	TOTAL	17182	89285	100

 e) Estimate

Source: insideevs.com; goodcarbadcar.com


Tesla Model S & Others

Pl	Model	June Sales
1	Mercedes E/CLS-Class	4.316
2	BMW 5-Series	4.068
3	Tesla Model S e)	2.350
4	Audi A6	1.425
5	Mercedes S-Class	1.169

Looking at the E-Segment/full-size vehicles, both the Mercedes E/CLS-Class and BMW 5-Series benefit from volume deliveries of the new generation to stay well above the other models, with the Tesla Model S staying in its usual Third Place. 

It will be interesting to see if the upcoming Model 3 will cannibalize sufficient sales of the Model S, that forces it to drop it from its usual Bronze Model.

As for the Tesla Model X, its 2.200 units are not enough to reach the Top 5 in its class (#5 was the Volvo XC90, with 2.751 registrations), not only it has more competition to deal with, but also higher numbers to reach (Usually high end SUVs sell two to three times more than their sedan siblings), proving once again that the Tesla SUV should have been doing much better (Around 3.000 units/month) than its five year old brother.