Tesla Model 3 = 3% of US Car Sales in 1st Half of 2019
In the comments of my article about the Tesla Model 3 accounting for 67% of US electric vehicle sales in the second quarter, someone asked about the electric vehicle share of the overall market. I didn’t find second quarter (Q2) sales data anywhere, but I did quickly identify sales data for the first half of the year.
It turned out that fully electric vehicles accounted for 1.1% of the overall passenger vehicle market in the first half of the year in 2019, a disappointing figure that has only one bright spot — it means there’s a lot of room for growth. After a bit more number crunching, I also determined that EVs accounted for 1.6% of the market in the second quarter (yes, I had to do some extra digging and grade-school math to solve that equation). Neither of those figures is particularly noteworthy. Top European markets and China are a few times or even several times higher than that. And in Norway, of course, approximately half of new vehicle sales are electric.
What struck me as an interesting statistic to figure out, however, was the Model 3’s market share of the US car market. Since the Model 3 accounted for 67% of the EV market in Q2 and was the 9th best selling car in the US in the second quarter, it was obvious its solo market share would be pretty decent.
As it turns out, the Model 3 accounted for 1% of all US vehicle sales, and as you can see in the headline, Tesla’s mass-market supercar took 3% of the US car market in the first half of the year. In other words, a Model 3 delivery was approximately one out of every 33 car sales in the country.
In the second quarter, the Model 3 accounted for 4% of all US car sales (3.6%, more precisely). That’s approximately one out of every 27 vehicle sales. It’s hard to call that anything but a success.
Imagine how much of the market Tesla could have once it has a mass-market crossover and pickup truck available for purchase.
If you are interested in buying a Tesla Model 3 (or Model S or X) and need a referral code to get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging