January 2015 Sales Numbers

Across the board, in January 2015, vehicle sales were down for the plug-in vehicles I track, compared to the previous month, looked like this:

• Chevy Volt: DOWN 64% (542 vs. 1,490)
• Nissan Leaf: DOWN 66% (1,070 vs. 3,102) **failing to surpass the Volt’s total sales to date by 236 units. That’s only training by 0.032%!
• Plug-in Toyota Prius: DOWN 18% (401 vs. 492)
• Cadillac ELR: DOWN 22% (91 vs. 118)
• BMW i3: DOWN 34% (670 vs. 1,013)
• BMW i8: DOWN 46% (85 vs. 158)
• Ford Fusion Energi: DOWN 46% (426 vs. 789)
• Ford C-Max Energi: DOWN 40% (395 vs. 659)
• Chevy Corvette Stingray: DOWN 40% (2,127 vs. 3,552)

Some of this downturn has to be the hangover from the end of the end-of-year deals and the fact that plug-ins bought after December 31st have a long wait before they’ll yield cash in buyer’s pockets from the Income Tax credit. The price of gasoline is continuing to fall, but it’s hard to say if that is impacting plug-in sales. Just take a look at the gasoline price curve (in white, top graph)! Finally, many new plug-in vehicles have recently been announced, including the redesigned Chevy Volt. This may have buyers adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

I mentioned three months ago that the Leaf’s total US sales, could surpass the Volt’s by March or April of this year. Then I said I thought it would happen well before then. It almost happened this month, but looks like the Volt is king of the hill one more month. That being said, the Leaf almost doubled Volt unit sales in January.

Sales, compared to the same month a year ago, looked like this:

• Chevy Volt: DOWN 41% (542 vs. 918)
• Nissan Leaf: DOWN 15% (1,070 vs. 1,252)
• Plug-in Toyota Prius: DOWN 46% (492 vs. 919)
• Cadillac ELR: UP 124% (92 vs. 41)
• BMW i3: (did not exist a year ago)
• BMW i8: (did not exist a year ago)
• Ford Fusion Energi: DOWN 20% (426 vs. 533) **awaiting Ford’s numbers
• Ford C-Max Energi: DOWN 16% (395 vs. 471) **awaiting Ford’s numbers
• Chevy Corvette Stingray: down 6% (2,127 vs. 2,261)

The most notable item in the lower graph, is the adoption rate of the ELR and the BMW i8. Their adoption rate is well below all other plug-ins I currently track. I think we all get why the ELR is seeing low adoption rates, but the i8? Perhaps it is suffering from the price/performance comparison to the Tesla Model S, like the ELR. The ELR is probably being compared to a low-end Model S and the i8 to the P85D version. Time will tell…