Chevrolet Bolt EV continued a steady sales rise last month as it solidified its position among the top three plug-in electric cars for which monthly U.S. sales are reported. The Chevrolet Bolt EV continued a steady sales rise last month as it solidified its position among the top three plug-in electric cars for which monthly U.S. sales are reported. In August, Chevy delivered 2,107 Bolt EVs, the first time the car had sold more than 2,000 units in a month after entering the market in mid-December last year.
Close behind was the Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid, at 1,820 sales, with the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid in third place at 1,445 deliveries for August—its lowest monthly number since February 2016. The Nissan Leaf, now in full sell-down mode with four-figure discounts rampant across the country, logged 1,154 sales. Those four vehicles have collectively sold almost 50,000 units in the first eight months of the year: 11,670 Bolt EVs, 13,157 Prius Primes, 13,895 Volts, and 9,683 Leafs. More than 10 million new vehicles were sold in the U.S. over that period.
Tesla neither reports monthly sales nor breaks down its quarterly sales by country, so comparable figures for sales of the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X are not available. Tesla hasn't yet commented on how many Model 3 electric cars it sold in August, after delivering the first 30 to hand-picked buyers at the end of July. The company will gradually ramp up volumes of the Model 3 over what CEO Elon Musk has called several months of "production hell," with a goal of 5,000 Teslas a week coming off the line by December 31.With 455,000 reservations already placed for the car, whose base version will start at $35,000 before incentives, the Tesla Model 3 is widely expected to become one of the top-selling electric cars in the U.S.
Among other higher-volume electric cars, 504 BMW i3 electric cars found buyers—with and without the REx range-extending engine—a number exactly on pace with its monthly rate this year, for a year-to-date total of 4,097. Sales of the Volkswagen e-Golf were also steady at 317 units, for an eight-month total of 2,512. Rumors have emerged of high discounts required to move remaining stocks of 2016 e-Golfs, with 83-mile ranges, to make room for the 2017 model rated at a far higher 125 miles.
