U.S. electric car sales jump 5% as legacy brands offset Tesla losses

With over 101,000 registrations in October, Tesla remains the undisputed market leader despite the decline

We keep hearing about the downturn in the EV economy and how automakers are changing their electrification strategies because consumers aren’t spending. Of course, EV sales are down in countries like Germany, but in the U.S., people are still buying EVs and buying more of them than they did 12 months ago.

Data from S&P Global Mobility showed that electric vehicle registrations increased 5% in October from the same month in 2023, reaching a peak of 101,403 vehicles. It’s not Tesla that’s driving this growth, but traditional automakers.

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Chevrolet’s electric vehicle sales surged 38% to 6,741 units thanks to demand for the Blazer and Equinox, while Cadillac Lyriq registrations tripled to 2,489 units and Hummer’s electric truck sales increased by 1,015 units, up from 10% last year. Four times the monthly sales.

Built on the same GM platform and the same GM plant in Mexico as the Equinox, Honda’s Prologue isn’t yet available for 2023, but it is this year. It found 4,168 homes, just 12 fewer than its Chevrolet counterpart. Hyundai Motor’s Ioniq 5 facelift also helped its sales reach its expected target, with registrations increasing from 3,555 to 4,485 units.

Although electric vehicle sales have increased overall, the growth rate has slowed down, and deliveries of some models have been lower than before. For example, sales of the Ford Mustang Mach-E dropped from 3,949 to 3,479, and Rivian R1S sales fell by more than 500 to 2,456, according to an S&P Global Mobility spreadsheet. There are also concerns that the electric vehicle sector relies heavily on tax credits to stimulate demand and that public interest could wane if incentives are removed once Trump takes office.

America’s best-selling electric car

Tesla registrations actually fell 1.8%, and if you remove Tesla from the equation, EV sales grew not 5% but 11%. This isn’t a blip for Tesla: The automaker’s results have declined in seven of the first 10 months of 2024, automotive news According to reports, although this year’s facelifted Model 3 and Cybertruck are both new cars. While the Model 3 made progress, the Model Y suffered a decline, with sales falling from more than 25,000 to less than 22,000.

But before anyone realizes that Tesla is falling behind in the EV race, we should be clear that it’s still outperforming the next-best-selling brand’s EV models by more than six times. Or the sum of every brand ranked 2nd to 12th.

US electric vehicle registration