2018 Was The Best Year Ever For Electric Vehicle Sales In The US
74,500. And the Model X SUV had a good year, too, finding more than 21,000 buyers to become the third-best-selling EV. Despite this, Tesla garnered plenty of lukewarm press on Wednesday as it revealed that Model 3 production will remain far lower than Elon Musk had been promising for at least the next quarter. Musk had set a target of 5,000 Model 3s per week by the end of 2017, a figure he now says won't happen until Q2 2018 at the earliest. Chevrolet's Bolt EV was a strong second.
The Bolt notched up just over 23,000 sales in 2017, a strong performance considering it only went on sale in all 50 states halfway through the year. When Bolt EV and Volt sales are combined, that puts GM in a clear second place overall. But the Volt is selling many fewer units than compared to the same period in 2016, no doubt as a result of its purely electric BEV stablemate.
2017 was not a great year for the world's best-selling BEV, the Nissan Leaf. But there's a reason for that—it was the last year for the old model, which has just been replaced by a cheaper, better, longer-range Leaf. Sadly for Nissan USA, the company wasn't able to get the 2018 Leaf on sale here in time.
Inventory of the older model dried up in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, at the far opposite end of the chart, let's have a moment of silence for the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. Just six found buyers in 2017, the last of which sold in August. I reviewed the i-MiEV back in 2012, a rather underwhelming experience that left me recommending the Volt as a better green car at the time. Five years on, there was no way the little electric kei car could compete. Looking forward, we have every reason to think 2018 will see another year of EV growth in the US.
Audi is not the only Volkswagen brand working on new electric vehicles. Porsche is also aiming for strong performance, which it claims will have nothing to envy of its gas-powered counterparts. It is aiming for a 0 to 60 mph acceleration in 3.5 seconds. The automaker also claims that the Mission E will be equipped with a 800-volt charging system able to charge up to 80% in about 15 minutes.
The Mission E is expected to go into production at Porsche’s Zuffenhausen plant in 2019 and the company expects to produce about 20,000 units per year, which is significant for the luxury automaker. Jaguar is the latest automaker to invest in EVs and its first entry, the I-Pace, has been well-received so far. The luxury SUV is the first vehicle on a new EV platform developed by the British automaker.
Daimler is another automaker committing to volume production of electric vehicles and the first EV built from the ground up by the automaker, and without a powertrain built by Tesla, is the Mercedes-Benz Generation EQ. Mercedes says that the ‘Generation EQ’ battery pack will be scalable up to a total capacity of over 70 kWh for a range of ‘up to 500 kilometres’ (310 miles). Of course, that’s based on the NEDC standard and the real-world range or EPA-rated range would be expected to be significantly less, as previously mentioned.
The Tesla Model Y has been officially announced by CEO Elon Musk and other Tesla officials, but it hasn’t been officially unveiled yet which is why we only have unofficial renderings. Model Y is an important vehicle program for Tesla and it will help leverage the investment in the Model 3 program.
To be clear, the priority vehicle development after the Model 3 would be the Model Y, the compact SUV, because that’s also a car that we expect to see demand in the 500,000 to 1 million unit per year level. The other question is when will they officially unveil the vehicle,
