Having experienced the car business from the inside, I am not surprised at all by the January sales figures. It was a lonely month at the dealership. GM counted the end of 2013 as January 2nd. That was the last time I sold a vehicle until February 1st.
It was such a change of pace from December. With end-of-year specials and GM incentives, we were quite busy throughout the month of December. January seemed like someone shut off the switch, stopped the new customer pipeline. In a word, it was dead.
Many people on Facebook have mentioned how rare Volts are in their area. Although we’re the number one Chevrolet dealer in the nation, we currently only have four Volts in stock. At this point, I’m not sure if that’s due to the seasonal downturn or if we are not going to have as many Volts, going forward. (I hope it’s the downturn!)
The sales staff had all attempted to prepare me for what December and January would be like. Having never bought a vehicle in December in my life and knowing how busy the Christmas shopping season is for people, I thought everyone was exaggerating. But they weren’t. There were some beautiful, sunny, warm days in January, but that didn’t seem to bring many people out. It was as if everyone was tired of shopping. All shopping, including car shopping. At times, I expected to see tumbleweeds blow across the lot!
Now that I’ve prepared you, here’s what I’ve got:
Take a look at the right side of the upper graph and you’ll notice the plunge, across the board.
The Chevy Volt had its worst month in sales since January 2012 with only 918 vehicles sold. That is a decrease of 62%, compared to December (918 vs. 2,392). Even compared to the previous January, it was a decrease of 19% (918 vs. 1,130). In the lower graph though, the Volt continues to increase its lead over the original Prius’ sales at this point in its existence. As we move forward, this may become less important, as the original Prius was augmented by other models, splintering the sales numbers. It is my expectation the Volt will continue to pull away from that black curve.
A ray of hope appeared for GM, in the Cadillac ELR results. In its second month of availability, the ELR’s sales increased 683%! Don’t rush out an buy GM stock based on that though, as that was only 41 units, compared to December’s 6… (the tiny orange line in the bottom-right corner of the top graph is the ELR)
The standard against which I’ve been measuring EV adoption, the 2014 Corvette Stingray continues a four-month trend of great sales, considerably better, in fact, than any plug-in vehicle for which I have sales figures, recording 2,261 vehicles sold in January. That represents a 25% decrease, when compared to the December numbers. (2,261 vs. 3,005) Oddly enough, the Stingray seems to have been affected by the January slowdown even though there were no incentives in December and therefore, no loss of incentives to account for this change.
The Nissan Leaf fared a bit better, only experiencing a 50% decline, when compared to December, but scored a 93% increase compared to the previous January! (although January 2013 was a pretty bad month in the Leaf world…) This year may bring about a sea change in plug-ins, with the Leaf plant in Smyrna, Tennessee cranking up production.
The Toyota Prius Plug-in dropped by only 13% in January (803 vs. 919), but its sales trajectory, compared to the original Prius, is falling farther and farther behind. In my opinion, the battery is too small to be taken seriously by those wanting a plug-in vehicle.
As usual, we won’t know how the Tesla Model S has fared until Tesla Motors releases their quarterly results, sometime in April.
Gasoline prices remained stable through January, and seem to have had no affect on EV sales.
We need more expensive gasoline!
I agree. Let’s remove ALL subsidies for both EVs and the oil industry!
It’s still amazing how many people are completely oblivious to the effect of tax credits on the purchase. A buyer in December has to wait 2 months to claim the credits. A buyer in January has to wait 13 months. People shopping in this time frame are therefore motivated to make their purchase in December. So December unit sales are driven up and January are driven down.
I think it would probably be more useful to look at the December/January two month total or the average for those two months.
Yep, that always surprises me too. It would be a better stimulus to EV sales if the tax credit was handled as a point-of-sale rebate so that the time of year doesn’t throw a wrench in the works. When we got our two Volts, in August and October, we leased. Unfortunately the great lease deals ended in October of last year and I don’t know if they’re coming back or not.