Despite the good promotion and ecstatic headlines about the new Tesla Model 3, the car hasn’t managed yet to become number 1, the green market is still being dominated by its big sister Model S. The Chevy Bolt, with a record sales month, took the #2 spot, inching out my estimate for the Model X. After that, the plug-in hybrid Toyota Prius Prime and Chevy Volt round out the top 5.
Despite the addition of some extremely quick competitors on its track, the Nissan LEAF landed a healthy monthly sales total — still well above 1,000 cars a month — to take the #6 spot. After Ms. LEAF, the widely available yet less competitive (at least in consumers’ eyes) Ford C-Max Energi, Ford Fusion Energi, and BMW i3 took #7, #8, and #9, respectively. That said, the Energi models would theoretically surpass the Chevy Volt for the #5 spot if combined as one car.
In theory the Volkswagen e-Golf is #10 here, but there are actually over a dozen other plug-in cars on the market than reported here. They are basically compliance cars and are mostly plug-in hybrids with small batteries, but the core reason I don’t report them here is that the parent automakers don’t report them. Yes, I could put my blindfold on and try to estimate them (like I’m doing with Tesla sales), but I actually have a lot less info to go on for those models than for the Tesla models and, well, like I wrote, they are compliance cars with low sales — nothing like Model S and Model X sales.
Looking at July 2017 sales versus July 2016 sales, the sales of this group of fully electric cars were up 46%. Plug-in hybrid sales, meanwhile, were up 10%. Overall, that means the sales of these 14 plug-in cars were up 19%. January–July 2017 vs January–July 2016, fully electric car sales were up 86%, plug-in hybrid sales were up 34%, and sales of all 14 plug-in cars were up 45%.
