Tesla Still On Top In US Electric Vehicle Sales, GM Close Behind (arstechnica.com) 105
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Americans bought more electric vehicles in September than any other month this year. According to Inside EV's monthly sales report, 21,325 battery EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs found homes last month. That's 20 percent more than this time last year and the second highest number ever. 2017 looks like it will be a record year; a total of 159,614 EVs were sold, a figure that should easily be eclipsed by the end of October. Tesla leads the pack, thanks to healthy increases in both Model S and Model X sales this month. Tesla may suffer some good-natured teasing about frequently missed deadlines, but you could set your watch by the regularity of its quarter-ending jump in deliveries. Barring some unforeseen circumstance, the Model S will remain the best-selling EV for the third year running. Like the overall trend, sales for the startup EV maker are up compared to last year, and even if the Model 3 continues to frustrate, we expect it to break the 50,000 car barrier by year-end.
General Motors is the only other company within reach of Tesla, whether we're talking about range or sales volume. The Chevrolet Bolt EV is now on sale in all 50 states and finding traction -- 2,632 sold in September and more than 14,000 on the road in 2017 so far. That still only gets it to fifth overall on the score chart, and there are three months left to go. The Chevy Volt, the Bolt's plug-in hybrid EV stablemate, is still the second-most popular EV among American buyers, but its sales have leveled off for the last few months. Toyota is the only other OEM to make the top five, less than 300 units behind the Volt.
General Motors is the only other company within reach of Tesla, whether we're talking about range or sales volume. The Chevrolet Bolt EV is now on sale in all 50 states and finding traction -- 2,632 sold in September and more than 14,000 on the road in 2017 so far. That still only gets it to fifth overall on the score chart, and there are three months left to go. The Chevy Volt, the Bolt's plug-in hybrid EV stablemate, is still the second-most popular EV among American buyers, but its sales have leveled off for the last few months. Toyota is the only other OEM to make the top five, less than 300 units behind the Volt.
Lack of conventional styling (Score:4, Interesting)
When we bought our last new vehicle in 2016 we were willing to consider electrics, but basically there were no four door 100% electrics with conventional styling that had the range we we wanted and the cost we could bear. Ford had a hatchback that had acceptable styling but its range was too low. Tesla's Model S was far too expensive even as a used car. Basically everyone else's styling was stupid, with unnecessary panels that only existed to say, "look at me, I'm an electric!"
I guess I'm in the minority since I like wide, long, low vehicles rather than tall narrow vehicles, but if car makers would offer 100% electric variants of their conventionally-styled combustion-engine models, where styling changes are relatively conservative, we might be more inclined. Weird styling and this one-upsmanship of it is just gaudy.
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I suppose I add that I think Ford's was actually a two-door. Fiat has a 500e, but apparently it's only sold and supported in California since its only reason to exist is to satisfy California emissions laws, they have no interest in wider sales even though it actually has good visual appeal.
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Yup. Even if the shape of the vehicle is fairly normal, they seem to always add weird "electric" colors to make it look different. BMW is the worst at the weird colors. Nissan just does it with their logo, so it's not as obvious as others.
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Eh, the Leaf's headlights are the straw that breaks the camel's back for me. I've heard their assertion that the headlights act to make the airflow over the mirrors less problematic, but they're just so ugly...
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Lumpy headlights are now very common for aero reasons. They are easier to shape than the metalwork, so you can put sharp aerodynamic details on them (like vortex generators, to break up the airflow passing over the mirrors) cheaply. It's not just the Leaf.
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That swoop between the C-pillar and D-pillar, WHY?!
Why can't they just make normal looking cars?
Take the Hyundai Geneis coupe. The window behind the B-pillar cuts down into the beltline. Why did they do this?
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Range isn't usually an issue in my 2012 Leaf, but it's our second car, so we manage our use appropriately. The newer one has a lot longer range than mine. What's a reasonable range is different for different people.
I think it's a bit odd looking, but not ugly.
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Well for my wife and I, 150 miles is a reasonable range. 150 miles is about 50% over the longer drives we make in a day in our city, and is basically the equivalent of a half a tank of gasoline, and thus gives us enough reserve that even if we visit friends clear on the other side of the county we can still make side-trips on the way home if necessary.
The issue is that with a gasoline-powered car we know we can fill-up in a five-minute stop if we get low on fuel. The amount of time filling is almost so ne
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My Tesla experience is that we save that 5 minutes every week because we never have to think about charging except on trips. During trips, we make longer charging stops, but on a whole we spend less time fueling. It's a tradeoff that I feel I'm winning on, but I can see how others might feel differently.
Going forward, I expect charging will get faster, and batteries will get larger, bringing charging during trips into line with fueling with gas, eliminating any advantage perceived with gas cars.
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You could have waited a year and bought an Ioniq. That looks and drives like a normal car, according to reviewers. It also has a lifetime battery warranty.
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We could not have waited a year. We bought a new vehicle when the old one no longer suited our needs. We saw the need coming and had spent the better part of a year researching. When we made our choice it was the best fit for that time, and luckily that choice, made before we had kids, was also a good choice after having a child.
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Ask hipsters... They've figured it out.
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We had considered a Tesla to the point of going to look at them at the local retailer. They were just too expensive and frankly the touch-cockpit was a worry both from a safe-to-operate standpoint and from a long-term maintenance standpoint.
Re: Lack of conventional styling (Score:1)
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There is are reasons they don't offer an electric version of a conventional vehicle but a major one would be that the directly comparison becomes possible between electric/non-electric. When people can look at the price jump to go from gas to electric, the extra cost becomes hard to justify. I suspect this was a problem for Honda when they offered hybrid versions of the Civic and Accord.
Total Sales (Score:1)
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It is purely a technology issue. When battery prices halve again EVs will start to dominate sales.
A decade ago the carbon problem seemed unsolvable. How could we survive without such a basic commodity. It would be massively expensive.
But, just in time (or maybe just too late) the technology of PV solar became practical. It now looks like Trump is right to ignore the Paris accord, because it will simply become irrelevant as people move to renewables for price reasons. (And the Paris accord was a toothle
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Likely it will still be some what economically safe to buy an infernal combustion engine, right up to 2020 beyond that resale losses would become difficult, so still adamant for infernal combustion, buying second hand would be smarter. From 2020 on electrics will start to have real impact on sales and that includes resale impact. A lot depends upon how long you keep a car, the longer the more questionable the infernal combustion choice, keep you car a decade and that is real problematical as to when to make
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Weird. I've only had two LED bulb failures, both of them replaced under warranty.
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similar here - compact fluorescents were terrible, but I switched my entire house over to LED and haven't had a failure yet...
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> Do you still have the trove of 1000 incandescents
Nope. Living in the desert cured me of the idea of using light bulbs that waste most of their energy trying to be little space heaters.
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They are already cheaper when you calculate the entire cost of ownership over the period of the EV's warranty (typically 8 years).
No brake pads to replace until well after 100,000miles, no oil changes, no fluctuating gas price fill ups, no waiting in miserable weather for minutes on end to fill up every week (or more depending on car and guzzling rate).
My Gen2 Volt costs 1.59$CAD per every full charge of ~90km range average for 9 months of the year, and ~65km in dire winter.
I'm currently at +3400km on the s
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Ah, but you are excluding the cost of maintaining the roads, excluding (as far as I know) every manufacturer is losing or at best not making a profit on the electrics. Also when you did your calculation did you add back the federal incentive in your cost calc? That is 7500 and would buy alot of gas. The problem is if everyone buys an electric, there cannot be a 7500 rebate, there has to be some way to maintain roads (probably by a 5c/mile tax on your electric) and manufacturers have to make a profit as ther
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The day the federal incentive (or your location's equivalent—here provincial) can no longer pay for itself will be a win for everyone.
There are other ways to finance the roads. But that's beside the point I'm answering: EVs are, today, cheaper to operate when you factor everything.
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EVs are cheap crap. They are the modern equivalent of cheap crappy ICE econoboxes. They are a menace to the driver. This is more important to some of us than whether or not we think we're "saving a buck".
Not everything is about being a mindless cheapskate.
For some things quality matters. (Actually it should matter all the time but that's a different flame fest)
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You can already buy a sub-$1K electric car today.
But my kids' Power Wheels have trouble reaching highways speeds.
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Dont expected any electric Innovations from Euro Car companies. They hate batteries.
That is exactly why I am looking forward to getting an all electric BMW / Audi / etc. in 3-5 years when they are among the few manufacturers which still qualify for the $7500 tax credit in the US. The innovative companies will have already exceeded 200,000 US deliveries (with Tesla hitting that figure in 2018).
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....and if you leave it to state we will all be forced to use total crap. We will be forced into tiny crap cars we don't fit in, that are unsafe to drive due to being underpowered, and have crap range.
The current options all SUCK.
Being forced to buy stuff that sucks is hardly a convincing case for government intrusiveness.
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It's easy for a government today to say "we'll ban ICE" by some far off due in the future. It makes them look green without having to actually do anything today.
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I was wanting to say, in the US the LEAF is only about 4-5% behind the Bolt in year-to-date sales as of a few months ago.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017... [cleantechnica.com]
"General Motors is the only other company within reach of Tesla" my ass. (Maybe if you cheat and include the Volt)
=Smidge=
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agreed, we love our leaf, other than the random tesla they are the only other EVs we see. looking to get another one, just wish insurance was cheaper on them (a 2013 leaf is 2x the insurance cost of a 2008 Tundra)
Volt and system (Score:4, Interesting)
While it voids the warranty, I added a 1.5 kw inverter to its 12volt system (which has a 175 amp switcher from the main Li battery) so it can also back up my homestead in times of need (thick snow on the solar panels for example) - even if it has to run its amazingly efficient engine - it's a generator that is able to get to the store to be refilled, and no spilled gas or issues with starting - meant to be in the weather. I've only used it like that once to prove I wired it up right, but it's nice to know it's there.
I'm showing 224 lifetime mpg on the thing as I try and keep my trips in it to the range - which is consistently around 10 miles more than they claimed, at least in summer time. In winter, the heater is a pig...it's about the one time a gasoline car makes sense, as you capture your waste heat to heat the cabin.
But... but... (Score:2)
I thought Elon was delusional and full of shit and no way he would ever get Telsa Motors to a sustainable business model.
No, really. I read it here on /. over and over again. So it must be true.
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I thought Elon was delusional and full of shit and no way he would ever get Telsa Motors to a sustainable business model.
Tesla is still losing money hand over fist, and Elon is nowhere near hitting his production targets for the Model 3. It remains to be seen how long Tesla will last.
This is good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever Tesla is mentioned, it always brings out the financial trading guys who do nothing but praise or shit on the company because of their own money interests. I think it's important that everyone remember that the entire point of Tesla Motors was to show that electric vehicles were viable and to hopefully get the ball rolling with moving society to electric vehicles. The fact that other companies are being forced to throw their hat in the ring shows that there is a real demand for electric vehicles. Nothing is ever done perfectly on the first try (or generation of vehicles in this case) but we're progressing toward a sustainable automotive option which is extremely important. Yes, not all sources of electricity are sustainable but we're marking progress in that area too.
There is still hope, we can still salvage this planet before the ecosystem goes pear-shaped, even if we have to drag the people in denial, kicking and screaming with us.
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Tell me when we start charging adding a tax to gasoline for the amount of money required to remove from the resulting CO2 from the air. Until then, you are just stealing money from the future because we are going to have to start removing CO2 from the air and that shit isn't going to be free.
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Oh I dunno, planting trees isn't THAT expensive is it?
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There is a lot more that has to happen than just planting trees. Trees are typically just a temporary way to tie up carbon. Forests are essentially carbon sponges, they'll hold carbon but have a saturation limit and once sufficiently mature start releasing old carbon as they intake new carbon. We could go in and harvest trees specifically to lock them up somewhere to sequester their carbon, but we'd have to do this on a truly massive scale to make a dent in just our current carbon output. For the USA we out
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Trees do not permanently remove CO2 from the air, they only hold it for a brief period before releasing almost all of it back into the air. There is also the matter of the acidification of the oceans which wouldn't be addressed by trees because they resperate annually causing the ocean to become a giant CO2 sink. Anyway, trees have been around a lot longer than humanity's CO2 problem, so don't you think they would have completely exhausted the CO2 from the air if they were good at absorbing CO2? Trees ar
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It's interesting that they have to include hybrids in GM's numbers to make this story work, otherwise their EV sales look pathetic and are way behind rivals like Nissan.
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I'll go on road trips and stay at campsites instead of hotels to save money. The sites I've seen offer AC service. Generators are typically frowned upon on a campsite.
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So is hydrogen and biofuels pretty much a dead end at this point?
Hydrogen is not an energy source so any vehicle that burns hydrogen is really running off the energy that created it, which in the USA is a mix of coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Same for electric cars, they really run on coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Some places with an abundance of flowing water will have some of the energy from hydro.
Biofuels is also mostly a means to convert a low quality energy source (coal and natural gas mainly) into a high quality energy for storage and transportation (liquid fu
do you never get tired? (Score:2)
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I'm starting to warm up to the idea .... (Score:2)
Haven't bought an electric yet, but a couple of things are making them more attractive for our family.
#1, I live in an area where you have a lot of highways with HOV lanes. During rush hour in the morning and evening, it's often the case that the whole interstate is clogged up except that far left HOV lane, that's traveling along near the speed limit. Electric cars are allowed to drive in the HOV lanes legally at these times, even if you have no occupants other than yourself as the driver. The idea I could
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Ditto. I drive 45 miles every day. Sometimes 70. I have a garage where it can charge.
3-4 times a year I drive to a location where I will need to charge to get home again.
Sadly, around here in Denmark, our anti-green goverment have added the taxes back on EVs. So we will after a few years have a 150% on EVs too, like reqular cars.
Right now it is "only" 40% tax.
And so, Chevy/Opel, won't even bother to sell the Bolt here(as the Ampera-e). I would have bought it if I could buy it at the old price without anythi
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I previously leased a BEV for my daughters (but one of them crashed it). I replaced it with a 2013 Volt (Gen 1) for $11,000. Both daughters specifically requested a PHEV rather than a BEV because they wanted the flexibility to do longer trips without having to worry about how they were going to charge the car back up. It's worked out well because 99% of their driving falls within the electric range of the vehicle (it consistently gets 45-50 miles before running out of charge).
I put a dryer outlet in the gar
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The only negative thing I'll say about the Volt
Are you positive?
If Tesla fell to #2 (Score:2)
Oddly US centric results (Score:1)
Just can't believe I was so completely wrong (Score:2)
Considering the hurricanes (Score:2)
and the fact insurance adjustment can take a while expect October to outshine September. Yes it has a bit to do with a shift in mindset, it also has a LOT to do with shit-tons of cars with water up to the windshields in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.
EVs have already won here in Norway (Score:4, Interesting)
Last month both VW (e-Golf) and Tesla (S+X) sold more than 2000 EVs here:
https://electrek.co/2017/10/06... [electrek.co]
Currently EVs sell more than plug-in hybrids and both of them outsell diesel or gasoline ICE cars.
We are definitely on target for the planned 2025 date when all new vehicles should be either pure EVs or plug-in hybrids with some serious range in battery-only modus.
The reasons are not to hard to explain: Due to Norway's extremely high vehicle taxes which are waived for EVs, a low-end Tesla like my S70D cost far less than any car, of any make, that is capable of similar acceleration. At the high end a Model S P100DL costs just 50% of the starting price (before options) of an Audi R8 Coupe, and that Audi is a second slower from 0 to 100 km/hr.
We also get a reduced road tax, no toll road fees, access to bus lanes, free parking and free public charging. I save 59 NOK (almost USD 8) in toll fees every day just on the morning drive to my office, so my monthly cost (inlcuding appreciation) is actually lower than for my previous car, a Skoda Octavia 4x4 diesel.
Terje
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With the MIT lithium battery improvements today with asphalt and carbon nanotubes, it might very well be the gigafactories are better than predicted. Oops. They tested their v0.1 batteries at my site and explosion and ignition characteristics were determined. How many gigafactories?
Are you a bot? I think that you're a bot.
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If it's 14 years old then it's not a "new" company anymore. There are car companies that have come and gone in the space of 14 years.
If they've really been around that long, it's time for them to get their act together already. They're like a pre-Ford boutique manufacturer at this point.They need to get past that already.