Tesla has completely dominated the latest data on electric vehicle sales in the United States, accounting for more than four out of five new EV sales as the share of EVs in the world’s biggest economy continues to grow.
In a note with the headline “Last days of the Ice Age”, in reference to the declining sales of internal combustion engine vehicles, Morgan Stanley notes that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of new vehicle sales at the end of November was 15.9 million vehicles, a decline of 2.8 per cent when factoring in the number of selling days.
But while overall car sales are down, the number of full battery EV sales has surged 40.6 per cent, and its market share has jumped from 1.5 per cent to 1.8 per cent in terms of volume, and likely much more than that in terms of value.
And the increase in battery EVs is almost entirely due to Tesla, which increased its dominance of the market from 76 per cent to 81 per cent, as its sales rose 36 per cent year on year, while the rest of the EV market managed an increase of just 1 per cent.
In the month of November, Tesla’s assumed sales of 21,650 in the US sales compared to the rest of the battery EV sales of just 5,166 from the combined output of Jaguar, BMW, Porsche, Audi, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Kia, VW, Nissan, Volvo, Mini Cooper, Mercedes, Honda and Fiat.
“Tesla appears to be outselling the rest of the OEMs (car makers) in battery EVs by around 4.2 times,” Morgan Stanley noted. Which at least partially explains why its share price is doing pretty much the same thing – now just short of $US600 and a market value of $US562 billion.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.