I’m running a day behind this month. I’m attributing this to icy weather in the DFW area and a migraine.
Let’s cut to the chase:
Average gasoline prices increased a little bit last month, going from a January average of $3.28 per gallon to February’s $3.36. Nothing major there as far as an impact on EV sales. Probably a bigger impact, is the fact that the weather is starting to warm up and people have started to receive their income tax refunds. Traffic has definitely increased at my Chevy dealership and my sales have increased infinitely. When your sales were zero in January, any sales in February are, by definition, an infinite increase! 😉
Across the board, every EV I track showed an increase in sales!
- The Chevy Volt, up 32% over the previous month (1,210 vs. 918), but down 26% from the previous February (1,210 vs. 1,626). The Volt has been advertised on television recently in a humorous way (some would say ‘low-key’) that explains the lack of “range anxiety” for Volt drivers.
- The Nissan Leaf, up 14% over the previous month (1,425 vs. 1,252), and up 218% over the previous February (1,425 vs. 653). This makes the Leaf the #1-selling EV for February 2014, of the ones that I am tracking. Last March, Leaf sales surged forward over the news of a $5,000 price decrease.
- The Toyota Plug-in Prius showed a healthy 30% increase in sales, over the previous month (1,041 vs. 803) and an even bigger increase of 50% over the previous February! (1,041 vs. 693)
- The Tesla Model S remains shrouded in mystery, but we will see their sales figures for  January through March 2014 next month, when they release their quarterly report.
- The Cadillac ELR, prominently advertised during the Academy Awards broadcast last Sunday, showed a paltry increase in unit sales (58 vs. 41) over the previous month, however this represented a 41% increase. News has surfaced that half the Cadillac dealers have declined to carry the ELR, casting clouds over the vehicle’s future. As it was not available a year ago, there is no comparison to show for that. The ELR commercial has received some negative reviews over its swagger, but I wish Chevrolet would show some of that same swagger when promoting the Volt.
- Finally, my benchmark gasoline-powered vehicle, the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray also showed an increase, over the previous month, of 8%. Like the ELR, the Stingray  is a new model (C7) and was not available in February of 2013.
The usual graphs are shown below. The ELR is hidden in the lower graph, buried under the start-up curves of the other vehicles. In the upper graph though, it can be seen in the lower-right corner, starting its climb. In the lower graph, we can also see that, at the three-year mark, the original Toyota Prius’ sales started to tail off. This is not because the 2nd generation Prius was introduced at the three-year mark. It was introduced around the 6th anniversary of the original design. The Volt, Leaf and Model S still seem to have some life in them!
