Tesla is still unsurprisingly the dominant force in America’s electric vehicle market and its Model 3 was the country’s best-selling electric vehicle in the first six months of the year. Just over 38,000 Model 3 EVs were sold, five times as many units as the Chevy Bolt and 152 times as many as the BMW i3, according to Clean Technica. Despite its dominance, the Model 3’s sales figures were significantly lower than the 69,000 it sold during the same period in 2019, primarily due to the economic downturn from the coronavirus crisis coupled with the fact that units sold are now split with the Model Y. Actually, 124,000 (89%) of the vehicles delivered by Tesla in Q3 2020 were Model Y and Model 3 units.
Tesla is by no means the only manufacturer hit by the economic downturn with the Nissan Leaf’s sales pretty much halved compared to the first six months of last year. Some companies are doing better with the Audi e-tron adding a thousand units between January and June of 2020. Clean Technica states that its analysis is not a comprehensive electric vehicle sales report as many manufacturers do not publish such data. For example, while Tesla does report its global sales numbers, it does not do so for its U.S. market and the estimates come from both the EVvolumes.com database and through data regarding the number of Teslas sold in other countries.
Niall McCarthy
Source: Statista