Tesla extends lead in California, nearly 1/4 of new vehicles have plugs
Tesla continues to have the two top-selling vehicles in California, with the Tesla Model Y extending its #1 sales lead over the competition and the Model 3 holding strong at #2. But other manufacturers’ sales are picking up too, leading the state to a 23.2% market share for vehicles with plugs – 19.5% BEV and 3.7% PHEV.
Each quarter, the California New Car Dealers’ Association releases data showing trends in auto sales. These trends have been interesting to watch from an EV perspective, given California’s status as the EV market share leader in the US.
And that market share just continues to rise. In Q1, nearly a quarter of California’s cars had a plug on them, and more than a third of them had some sort of electric motor in them (hybrids were an additional 11%, making 34.2% “electrified” vehicles total).
Additionally, it is clear that California is choosing BEVs, rather than PHEVs and hybrids, as BEV sales growth continues to decouple from hybrids and PHEVs. PHEV and hybrid sales are mostly flat compared to last year, while BEVs continue to rise.
That said – BEV + PHEV share is actually flat compared to Q4 of 2022, which was about 24%.
Over the years, Tesla’s performance in California, the state where the company was founded and grew to become the behemoth it now is, has been strong and only getting stronger.
Last year, the Tesla Model 3 outsold the Toyota Camry in California, which had previously been the best-selling car in the state for 28 years straight. This was particularly impressive given the price of the Model 3 last year, which was significantly higher before this year’s massive price drops.
The newest data shows Tesla continuing its dominance, with the top-selling passenger car and top-selling light truck in the state. The Tesla Model Y is the state’s most popular vehicle, selling 31,940 units in the first quarter, trailed by the Model 3 with 17,715 units.
Just behind Tesla’s two vehicles are the Toyota Camry and RAV4 and the Ford F-Series. These are interesting because all three of them are powerhouses – the F-series has been America’s best-selling vehicle for decades, the RAV4 has been America and the world’s best-selling SUV for some time, and the Camry had been California’s best selling car for decades as well.
And the Model Y expanded its dominance significantly. Last year, it held 7.6% of the light truck market, selling 1.4x as many vehicles as the second-place RAV4. This year so far, Model Y has 10.3% of the popular light truck segment, and sold a whopping 2.4x as many units as second-place RAV4.
Things are getting a little closer in passenger cars, with the Camry holding fairly steady at 10.0% (compared to last year’s 10.7%) and Model 3 dropping slightly to 12.7% (from last year’s 15%). So the Model 3 has held its position, but its getting a little closer than it was. This could be due to the upcoming Model 3 “Project Highland” refresh.
Combined, Tesla is still the #2 selling brand, behind Toyota, since Tesla sells in fewer segments than Toyota does. But Toyota’s full-year market share was 17.3% in 2022, and it has dropped to 15.2% in Q1 2023. Tesla’s was 11.2% in 2022, and has seen a small increase to 11.8% in 2023 so far. If this pace continues (and Toyota continues not to make EVs), we could see Tesla overtake Toyota as the top-selling company in the next year or two.
Last year, we also saw that virtually every brand had decreasing sales, with the only notable exceptions being Tesla (up 54%) and Genesis (up 26%), mostly due to a global downturn in the auto industry related to pandemic supply challenges. But compared to the first quarter of last year, the first quarter of 2023 has seen sales increases for most brands – with Tesla actually around the middle of the pack, with a sales increase of just 10.6%.
Electrek’s Take
The reason this data is interesting is because California isn’t so much an outlier in EV sales as it is a leader. The state tends to adopt and set trends ahead of other states, and can be seen as a bellwether for where the rest of the country will end up going eventually. Lots of style and technology trends start in California and then filter out elsewhere, and EVs have shown to be one of them.
EV market growth is nothing new to readers of Electrek, so it’s not like this new data is revolutionary or anything, but it can help us keep an eye on trends of where the market is going.
That said, while EV market share is growing compared to last year, it’s interesting to note that they’re not really increasing compared to last quarter. This could be due to the famous Tesla end-of-year sales pushes, which tend to backload EV sales. Or it could be because supply challenges affected the whole industry last year, depressing sales overall, whereas Tesla was comparatively less affected by those challenges and were able to buoy EV sales with their relatively unaffected production schedule.
Or it could have to do with the increasing chaos surrounding Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Anecdotally, as a Californian who knows a lot of young people interested in buying electric cars, a lot of people are getting turned off of the brand due to his recent behavior.
But also, Q1 didn’t really capture the full extent of Tesla’s price drops, which were intended to spur demand which has been an issue for Tesla lately. So perhaps we’ll see some more growth in Q2, as we still expect California to exit this year with a good ~25% or so EV market share, if trends continue.
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In a joint statement, French and German economists have called on governments to adopt “a common approach” to decarbonize European trucking fleets – and they’re calling for a focus on fully electric trucks, not hydrogen.
France and Germany are the two largest economies in the EU, and they share similar challenges when it comes to freight decarbonization. The two countries also share a border, and the traffic between the two nations generates major cross-border flows that create common externalities between the two countries.
At the same time, the EU’s transport sector has struggled to reduce emissions at the same rate as other industries – and road freight in particular is a major contributor to harmful carbon emissions issue due to that industry’s heavy reliance on diesel-powered trucks.
And for once, it seems like rail isn’t a viable option:
While rail remains competitive mainly for heavy, homogeneous goods over long distances. Most freight in Europe is indeed transported over distances of less than 200 km and involves consignment weights of up to 30 tonnes (GCEE, 2024) In most such cases, transportation by rail instead of truck is not possible or not competitive. Moreover, taking into account the goods currently transported in intermodal transport units over distances of more than 300 km, the modal shift potential from road to rail would be only 6% in Germany and less than 2% in France.
That leaves trucks – and, while numerous government incentives currently exist to promote the parallel development of both hydrogen and battery electric vehicle infrastructures, the study is clear in picking a winner.
“Policies should focus on battery-electric trucks (BET) as these represent the most mature and market-ready technology for road freight transport,” reads the the FGCEE statement. “Hence, to ramp-up usage of BET public funding should be used to accelerate the roll-out of fast-charging networks along major corridors and in private depots.”
The appeal was signed by the co-chair of the advisory body on the German side is the chairwoman of the German Council of Economic Experts, Monika Schnitzer. Camille Landais co-chairs the French side. On the German side, the appeal was signed by four of the five experts; Nuremberg-based energy economist Veronika Grimm (who also sits on the National Hydrogen Council, which is committed to promoting H2 trucks and filling stations) did not sign.
You can read an English version of the CAE FGCEE joint statement here.
Electrek’s Take
MAN Trucks’ CEO famously said that it was “impossible” for hydrogen to compete with BEVs, and even committed to building 200 hydrogen-powered semi truck to prove out that hypothesis.
He’s not alone. MAN’s board member for research and development, Frederik Zohm, said that the company is the one saying hydrogen still has years to go. “(MAN) continues to research fuel cell technology based on battery electrics,” he said, in a statement quoted by Hydrogen Insight, before another board member added that, “we (MAN) expect that, in the future, we will be able to best serve the vast majority of our customers’ transport applications with battery-electric trucks.”
With companies like Volvo and Renault and now Mercedes racking up millions of miles on their respective battery electric semi truck fleets, it’s no longer even close. EV is the way.
SOURCE | IMAGES: CAE FGCEE; via Electrive.
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GE Vernova has produced over half the turbines needed for SunZia Wind, which will be the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere when it comes online in 2026.
GE Vernova has manufactured enough turbines at its Pensacola, Florida, factory to supply over 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of the turbines needed for the $5 billion, 2.4 GW SunZia Wind, a project milestone. The wind farm will be sited in Lincoln, Torrance, and San Miguel counties in New Mexico.
At a ribbon-cutting event for Pensacola’s new customer experience center, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik noted that since 2023, the company has invested around $70 million in the Pensacola factory.
The Pensacola investments are part of the announcement GE Vernova made in January that it will invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities over the next two years to help meet the surging electricity demands globally. GE Vernova says it’s expecting its investments to create more than 1,500 new US jobs.
Vic Abate, CEO of GE Vernova Wind, said, “Our dedicated employees in Pensacola are working to address increasing energy demands for the US. The workhorse turbines manufactured at this world-class factory are engineered for reliability and scalability, ensuring our customers can meet growing energy demand.”
SunZia Wind and Transmission will create US history’s largest clean energy infrastructure project.
Read more: The largest clean energy project in US history closes $11B, starts full construction
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