December 2018 Sales Numbers

At the end of last year, I expected total cumulative sales of plug-in vehicles would be at least 1,106,181. Although December numbers for thirty plug-in models have not been published yet, at least 1,119,723 plug in vehicles have been sold in the U.S. I can now retire this chart until we get close to 2,000,000 plug-ins, around 2021…Tesla Motors’ Model 3 sales experienced the best plug-in vehicle monthly sales figure to date with 25,250 units sold! Tesla has now, officially, lost the full $7,500 federal income tax credit. It was cut in half to $3,750 on January 1st. GM will also lose the full tax credit on April 1st of this year. At Nissan’s current rate of sales, it will take almost 5 years for it to hit the 200,000th sale. This is the last you’ll see of this graph for quite a while, as well…GM seemed to be having difficulties with deliveries of Bolt EVs. Fortunately, all my customer orders arrived and have been delivered. On the down side, I have zero Bolt EV inventory.

Another item of interest, for residents of Texas, is the number of plug-in vehicle grants that have been handed out. Out of an allowed 2,000 grants, 1,044 have been issued. That’s 52% of the available grants and I expect the number to jump in the next two weeks, due to the traditional December spike is plug-in sales. “What traditional December spike?” you say. Well, look at the chart just above. Those are my monthly average sales figures for plug-in vehicles. Historically, December sales are almost twice the second-highest month (August).

One other goal was achieved, on the first working day of 2019: I sold my 100th new Chevy Volt! At the end of 2018, I was sitting at 99. My Bolt EV sales have reached 69, as of January 2nd.

Notice the high purple line, in the chart below, at the far right side of the graph. That’s the Model 3 sales curve. No other plug-in vehicle has come close to that kind of sales performance, as is witnessed by all the other vehicles I track looking like a bunch of confetti, on the floor, after a New Year’s Eve party.Here are the December 2018 sales figures, compared to the previous month. This month four plug-in vehicles I track showed lower sales, over the previous month. They were The BMW i3, Chevy Bolt EV and Volt and the Fusion Energi.

• Chevy Volt: DOWN 58% (1,058 vs. 2,530) **estimated
• Chevy Bolt EV: DOWN 50% (1,412 vs. 2,825) **estimated
• Nissan Leaf: UP 48% (1,667 vs. 1,128)
• Plug-in Toyota Prius: UP 19% (2,759 vs. 2,312)
• Tesla Model S: UP 18% (3,250 vs. 2,750) **estimated
• Tesla Model X: UP 28% (4,100 vs. 3,200) **estimated
• BMW i3: DOWN 27% (356 vs. 490)
• Ford Fusion Energi: DOWN 30% (790 vs. 1,131)
• Honda Clarity BEV & PHEV: UP 50% (2,843 vs. 1,894)
• Tesla Model 3: UP 35% (25,250 vs. 18,650)

Gasoline prices plummeted all month. It started at $2.445 per gallon and the price steadily fell, ending at $2.251. The fall was so steady, I felt compelled to show it in a graph. The blue line is the trend and the red lines are actual prices on the date indicated at the bottom of the chart. As you can see, the day-to-day changes were almost all negative, except from December 16th to the 18th. Gasoline has dropped in price 50¢, per gallon, in the last two months!My vehicle sales, in December 2018, EXPLODED. The table to the left of the chart has cells highlighted in red, if my sales were below my historical average for the month and green, if above average. Thanks to my move back to the main showroom, December became one of only four months, in 2018, where my monthly sales were above my historical average for that month. In fact, December 2018 was my second-best month in sales ever, second only to December 2016. What do those two Decembers have in common? Me being located in the main showroom, that’s what.My nineteen December 2018 sales were comprised of nine Bolt EVs, four Volts, two Malibus, two Equinoxes, a Camaro and a Suburban. My lifetime Volt sales at the end of December totaled 99. Who’s next? 😉My 2018 plug-in sales, in December, have rebounded and are even better than what they were the previous December. In fact, it was the best month EVER for my plug-in sales! The 13 in December 2018 bested my previous high of 10 plug-ins that occurred three months in 2017.Inventory of Bolt EVs is still very constrained. However, for 2018, the two huge purple bars and the two huge red bars show the vast majority of my sales, for the last two years, were of the Volt and Bolt EV. Malibu came in a distant third, due to crazy incentives from GM.Plug-in sales, compared to the same month a year ago, were mixed, with half dropping and half increasing.

• Chevy Volt: DOWN 45% (1,058 vs. 1,937)
• Chevy Bolt EV: DOWN 56% (1,412 vs. 3,227)
• Nissan Leaf: UP 1,534% (1,667 vs. 102)
• Plug-in Toyota Prius: UP 14% (2,759 vs. 2,420)
• Tesla Model S: DOWN 35% (3,250 vs. 4,975)
• Tesla Model X: UP 24% (4,100 vs. 3,300)
• BMW i3: DOWN 47% (356 vs. 672)
• Ford Fusion Energi: DOWN 10% (790 vs. 875)
• Honda Clarity BEV & PHEV: UP 99% (2,843 vs. 1,425)
• Tesla Model 3: UP 2,282% (25,250 vs. 1,060) **Model 3 debuted in July 2017

One note on the Clarity & Model 3: December 2018 was compared with only the sixth month of these vehicles’ availability. Due to that, the percentages are more skewed than if they had a “normal” month’s volume to compare to. The Nissan Leaf, in December 2017, was in a long, slow wind-down of the first generation Leaf.

On a final note, a comment on Facebook asked me to comment on where I obtain my sales figures. I use several sources, including InsideEVs, GoodCarBadCar, CarSalesBase and hybridCars.