US EV Sales Up 170% in 1st Quarter vs. 1st Quarter of 2021

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One of the hottest topics of the year in the auto industry has been hype about EV sales drooping, or at least not living up to expectations.

How much substance is actually in that hype? Well, a little bit, but digging deeper, we can see that the EV market is still looking very good.

Yes, compared to Q1 2023, EV sales are up only a little bit in the first quarter of 2024 — just 2%. However, if you look back two years, EV sales are up 71%, and if you look back three years to Q1 2021, EV sales are up 170%!

Secondly, we have to bring Tesla into this briefly. Tesla had a sales drop in Q1 2024 compared to Q1 2023 (for various reasons). With Tesla being such a huge portion of US EV sales, any significant changes in Tesla’s sales trends are going to influence overall US EV sales trends. If you take Tesla out of these equations, US EV sales were actually up .

Compared to Q1 2021, non-Tesla EV sales were up 343%. Compared to Q1 2022, non-Tesla EV sales were up 211%. Compared to Q1 2023, non-Tesla EV sales were up 24%. Even that last growth figure of 24% is impressive.

Perhaps we’ve been a little spoiled by growth from the past few years. However, with Tesla having production delays for the US market in Q1 (due to the company upgrading the Model 3 production line for the new “Highland” Model 3), one has to think that growth could be considerably stronger soon.

We’ll see what happens in the second quarter, but, for now, it seems to me there’s much to celebrate in regards to EV sales growth in the USA. Don’t always believe the hype.