EVs as a percentage of light-vehicle registrations are up, now representing 7 percent of the market, compared with 4.6 percent just a year ago. New EV registrations rose by a healthy 68 percent in the January-to-May period to a record 447,514 vehicles, but Experian noted that about half of the increase came solely from Tesla, which continues to vacuum up EV market share.
If you look only at the top line, the EV market might appear pretty rosy, but I’m skeptical.
Legacy automakers continue to wade deeper into the EV pool, pushed by their investor-aimed promises to eventually abandon internal combustion engines in the next decade or so. Chevrolet was the second-biggest EV seller in January-May, according to Experian, but was led by a nameplate — the Bolt — that’s going away. Ford grabbed the No. 3 spot, but its rate of sales growth in the segment has slowed dramatically.
Among the brands I cover, traditional powerhouse Japanese partners Toyota and Subaru sold a paltry 7,748 copies of the Toyota bZ4X, Lexus RZ450e and Subaru Solterra between them in that five-month period, after the bZ4X’s and Solterra’s troubled launches in 2022.
Volkswagen this month reported that it nearly quadrupled the number of ID4 compact crossovers it had sold in the U.S. in January-May, but the 16,448 sales accounted for 11 percent of the brand’s total sales during the period. You would think posting those kinds of numbers would be great, but in some regions of the country, ID4s are starting to stack up on dealership lots, and dealers tell me they’re running out of interested buyers.
