Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Electric Vehicles

5 Takeaways From an Actually Pretty Solid Quarter for EV Sales

The vibes are shifting yet again.

Teslas.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Stop me if you’ve heard this one already, but the supposed EV sales slump isn’t real. The overall growth rate has slowed somewhat, crushing any fantasy that America would accelerate to mostly electric driving in just a few years. But electric vehicles sales have been steadily rising amid a negative narrative, and they rose yet again in the third quarter of 2024.

Carmakers sold 346,309 of them from July to September, a 5% increase over the second quarter of this year and an 11% jump year-over-year. EVs reached 8.9% of all vehicles sold in America in the third quarter, prompting Cox Automotive (which owns Kelley Blue Book) to opine that 10% looks well within reach.

A look inside the numbers behind the news tells us a few important things about the state of EVs.

1. Somebody out there loves the Cybertruck

A lightning rod on wheels, the Cybertruck became a focal point for the anger and contempt lots of very online people feel toward Elon Musk and his support for Donald Trump. But as I noted a year ago for Heatmap, plenty of people want this car — either out of genuine affection for what it is and what it can do, or for the political statement they can make by owning one.

The numbers don’t lie. Despite a slow start, Tesla sold 16,692 Cybertrucks during the third quarter. That made it the number three EV in America behind Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3. The Cybertruck’s emergence, combined with better sales by a refreshed Model 3, helped to stop a slide at Tesla earlier this year caused by falling sales of the aging Models S, X, and Y.

As Tesla goes, so goes today’s EV market. Its slump in 2024 had hampered the growth of the industry at large; a rumored update to the industry-leading Model Y would be a shot in the arm for everybody. Yet even with Tesla stabilizing, Elon Musk’s dominance isn’t what it once was. The company’s market share, which hovered in the 70% range in 2019 and 2020, has fallen below 50%. With a growing slate of competitors, it may never cross above that threshold again.

2. Trending up: GM

Korean brands Hyundai and Kia had been the non-Tesla success story of the past year-plus, with American EV shoppers falling in love with the quirky Hyundai Ioniq 5 in particular. But General Motors seized second place in Q3 as some of its plans finally came to fruition. Chevy sold nearly 8,000 Blazer EVs and almost 10,000 Equinox EVs last quarter. That latter figure is particularly impressive given that the $35,000 base-level Equinox, which could fall below $30,000 after incentives, didn’t hit the market until October. The Cadillac Lyric found a niche. Even the preposterous GMC Hummer EV saw a big sales bump.

GM’s solid numbers don’t include the remarkable success of its partnership with Honda, who borrowed GM’s Ultium platform to build its first American EV, the Prologue. That vehicle sold 12,644 in the third quarter, outpacing GM’s own EV crossovers. (Perhaps the legion of loyal Honda buyers in America were just waiting for the brand to sell them an electric car.)

Chevy and Honda’s success came at the expense of some brands whose electric crossovers aren’t quite so new and exciting anymore. The Ioniq 5 dropped a tiny bit compared to the third quarter of 2023, just 0.5%. However, Ford’s Mustang Mach-E dropped by nearly 10% year over year, while the Volkswagen ID.4 tumbled by 57.8%.

3. Treading water: Ford

Speaking of Ford, it wasn’t all bad news for GM’s rival. Ford’s EV division did better than Wall Street expected. Overall sales actually rose, with gains from the E-transit van and F-150 Lightning pickup truck balancing out falling numbers from the Mustang Mach-E. Even so, Ford is losing billions of dollars on its electric vehicles. The blue oval brand faces a double challenge: It needs to get a new EV on sale to juice sales while figuring out how to dramatically cut manufacturing costs.

4. Incentives matter

Watch any car commercial and you’ll be reminded that incentives aren’t the sole domain of EVs. Brands and dealerships offer all kinds of rebates and discounts to move gasoline cars off the lot. Yet because of the size of the federal and state tax credits and rebates for buying electric, those incentives retain an outsized impact on sales. Cox points out that incentives made up 12% of the average price of an EV sold in the third quarter of this year, compared to just above 7% for other kinds of cars.

What’s especially dramatic, though, is the incentive-driven rise of the leased EV. Overall, Americans lease just over 20% of their new cars, not far from where the figure stood two years ago. At the end of 2022, less than 10% of Americans who got a new EV leased it. But in December of that year, the federal government announced many EVs that weren’t ineligible for tax credits when purchased outright would be eligible for those incentives if people leased them. Cox’s chart paints a stark picture, showing leases rocketing from about 9% to 43% of EV sales.

5. Luxury brands are leading the way

In their own EV makeup, that is. There are six car brands that have 10% of their U.S. sales or more from EVs: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Jaguar, Audi, and Cadillac — luxury brands all — are five of them. (The other is Mini.)

This makes perfect sense, of course. Luxury brands sell fewer vehicles overall, so it’s easier for EVs to make a big dent in sales. They sell expensive cars, which makes it easier for buyers to swallow the higher cost of EVs. Their drivers have always been more likely to lease cars, even before leasing EVs in particular became so appealing.

In sum, it means that the luxury car brands — while selling fewer overall EVs than Chevy and Honda will eventually sell — will be the first to experience what it’s like for a legacy car brand when the scales tip to more EVs than not.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Climate Tech

Why Air Products Investors Revolted Against Clean Hydrogen

The company has a new CEO and a new strategy — to refocus on its “core business.”

The Air Products logo.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

After a proxy fight, a successful shareholder revolt, and the ousting of a CEO, Air Products, the largest hydrogen company in the world, is floundering. In early May, it posted a $1.7 billion net loss for the second quarter of the fiscal year. While Air Products produces an array of industrial gases, the newly appointed CEO, Eduardo Menezes, told investors on the company’s recent Q2 earnings call that he blamed its investments in clean hydrogen projects for its recent struggles.

“Over the past few years Air Products moved away from its core business in search of growth,” Menezes said. (That core business would be traditional industrial gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, produced sans newfangled clean technologies.) “We deployed capital to complex, higher risk projects with first-of-a-kind technologies — and, more importantly, without committed offtake agreements in place.” The company took on significant debt and increased its headcount to try and carry out its ambitious agenda, he explained. “This had a negative impact on both cost and execution quality, leading to significant project delays.”

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Sparks

Don’t Look Now, But China Is Importing Less Coal

Add it to the evidence that China’s greenhouse gas emissions may be peaking, if they haven’t already.

A Chinese coal worker.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Exactly where China is in its energy transition remains somewhat fuzzy. Has the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases already hit peak emissions? Will it in 2025? That remains to be seen. But its import data for this year suggests an economy that’s in a rapid transition.

According to government trade data, in the first fourth months of this year, China imported $12.1 billion of coal, $100.4 billion of crude oil, and $18 billion of natural gas. In terms of value, that’s a 27% year over year decline in coal, a 8.5% decline in oil, and a 15.7% decline in natural gas. In terms of volume, it was a 5.3% decline, a slight 0.5% increase, and a 9.2% decline, respectively.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Electric Vehicles

The Little Kid In Me Is Psyched for Electric Bulldozers

All of the awesome earth-moving and none of the planet- or lung-harming emissions.

An EV bulldozer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Construction is a dirty business, literally and figuratively. Mud and gunk and tar come with the territory for those who erect buildings and pave roads for a living. And the industrial machines that provide the muscle for the task run on hulking diesel engines that spew carbon and soot as they work.

Heavy equipment feels like an unlikely place to use all-electric power in order to ditch fossil fuels. The sheer size and intense workload of a loader or excavator means it has enormous energy needs. Yet the era of electric construction equipment has begun, with companies such as Volvo, Komatsu, and Bobcat all now marketing electric dirt movers and diggers. One big reason why: Full-size machines create the opportunity to make construction projects quieter and cleaner — a potentially huge benefit for those that happen in dense areas around lots of people.

Keep reading...Show less
Green