Electric Cars Sold Out!?!?

The Jimbo Banana 9000 electric car is just as sold out as the Fiat 500e, none made, none sold.

 

Exactly. Honda Fit leases are in the single digits. Not exactly flying out the door, 'selling out' of 10 cars is not shocking. The Leaf is doing reasonably well (I see them everywhere in the Sacramento region), and the Tesla is reportedly selling by the thousands, so far. But other EVs are selling in small small numbers. I drive the Rav4 EV and that sold only 84 in May. In comparison hybrids are selling well. The Prius sold over 15,000 last month.

 

Check out this thread for monthly sales numbers:
Dashboard Feb-May 2013 | PriusChat

 

This is a terribly misleading article... don't believe the hype.

 

We should also ask how much money the manufacturer is making (losing) on each sale.

 

is anyone but Tesla serious and not losing money on EVs? So far, as much as I know, all are compliance vehicles. except for Leaf and Volt, but they are selling those so much under expectations that they are total failures.

 

I think Nissan is committed to the EV project.

 

I recall one of the PC in San Diego checking around on the new Honda Fit EV after the price drop and the dealers had no inventory and no ETA

 

Telsa's making a profit mostly because they sell their EV credits to other manufactures as they don't sell other cars(see
The other dealers are using their own credits.

From Forums | Tesla Motors

So the credits are worth a lot to the buyers. Nissian and GM simply don't have to pay tesla if their sales are sufficient for their credit needs. both the Leaf and the volt are selling at a better rate, since date of launch, than the Initial Prius did. Things need to be looked at in context. People were calling the Prius a total failure too.

The compliance cars from fit EV to Rav4 EV (and maybe even Plug-in-Prius ) are just an attempt to get credits so they can sell other cars.

 

Since the Prius was limited to Japan for the first two full years of sales, the comparison makes little sense. It is just a talking point that lacks context.

Moreover, the general context of selling an alternative vehicle is so different the comparison does not begin to pass the threshold of ludicrous:

• Fuel in the US was cheap
• Hybrids were unknown to the general populace, or even known to a fan base
• Subsidies were at most a fraction of todays EVs in the US
• No cottage industry of *EV was known anywhere

 

Actually, it is accurate.
EVs are in short supply in CA, but not because there is natural 'demand'.
Keep in mind:
(1) The 6 biggest carmakers must offer zero-emissions vehicles, hence the low, CA-only leases
(2) Even these leases might not be enough, except for one HUGE factor: The white EV carpool-lane access stickers have had their privileges extended from Jan. 1, 2015 to Jan. 1, 2020. (passed Senate, pending House). This is a BIG deal, especially if you spend a lot of time in traffic. That can make you an 'EV believer' more than anything

 

I know a few people who made a purchase decision based on access to the diamond lane and tax credits

 

It's a good question. We'll probably never get accurate info, but something tells me the answer is 'not much'.
I say this because the LEAF is sold for a relatively low price, and its price is lower now than before. There is no way Nissan would have done that if they were losing money on each one.....they already make more than enough to comply with the ZEV mandate, so lowering the price would be just giving away the farm. They probably make a razor-thin margin on each LEAF.
Extrapolating from this, we can estimate the cost of similar-sized EVs that are compliance-only: Spark, Fiat 500, Fit, etc. Factoring in the disadvantage of lower volume vis-a-vis the LEAF, I would estimate a few thousand per unit; not more than $10,000 per.
Further, about the leases: they are CA-only, in order to comply with ZEV mandate. It is my understanding that the owner (the leasing company/carmaker/dealer) gets the $7500 fed credit in any lease. That certainly helps. Yes, the leases are ridiculously low, but consider residual value. My guess is they will be offered for sale to any buyer, anywhere in the U.S., and they will probably command a very handsome price on the back end......perhaps enough to even break-even or make a small profit.

 

Actually I was ignoring the first years in Japan and only conisider the US sales of the Prius, since change markets is toomuch of a context shift: Here is a plot of the data: (remember there is a seasonal effect in cars and they started different times of the year.

• Cumulative sales 32 months after launch differ by only about 6% (Prius HEV 41237, Volt 38615) which given the seasonal differences is probably not statistically significant.
• Note doing US only is an advantage for prius since it already had 2-3 years of reliability time and also gave it time to build its "fan base".
• Subsidies were smaller than today EVs tax credits but so were the prices.. EVs today are higher priced even after the credits. The credit really just go tot he manufacture, what matters to people is what they pay. The Orginal
• Payback just from gas price differential is actually similar.. about 8 years for a 2001 prius, about 8 years for the Volt.
• Few if any buyers of the early adoptiers are going to be impacted are because of gas price differential, they buy for the tech. TCO would be cheaper to not buy a hybrid or a new EV or PHEV, but rather a used highMPG ICE.
• Cottage industry EV folks are probably not buying a Volt.. They are buying old Prius and upgrading or building their own pure EVs.

 

I'm not following your reasoning. If you think the cars are compliance only, and that the requirement has been met, then why make more at a loss only for the compliance market ?

Perhaps Nissan is either banking or selling the credit. Another thread recently make the point that Tesla is profiting nicely from the secondary credit market.

 

I don't view the LEAF as a compliance car....it was very clear Nissan made it as a dedicated all-U.S. ev, though sales have not panned out as hoped.
Contrast that with this Fiat, Fit, Spark, Rav4. These are made in very limited volumes, and almost surely made at a "loss". (I say "loss" because we don't know what residual value these will eventually fetch).
Those carmakers are probably ok with losing money on each ev, since they are faced with ZEV compliance. They are willing to lower prices (new Fit lease) in order to sell enough to meet ZEV.
Nissan, on the other hand, was already on track to meet ZEV since it had poured so many resources in brining the LEAF to the U.S. and CA as the 1st mass-market EV.
So, what I am saying is that there is no way Nissan is lowering the price or giving away great lease deals just for ZEV compliance.....they already had that in the bag. They are doing so, because they can: they are making a profit ($7500 fed rebate helps) and they probably want to move more units. If they were in danger of losing money, they wouldn't have lowered the price recently......'maintaining price integrity' would have ensured ZEV compliance, regardless.
They are just under more pressure to 'move metal' since they have so many more EV capital expenditures (TN factory, etc.) then the other compliance carmakers.

 

I'm not sure where your data is from; I take mine from the Wikipedia articles.
Volt started selling IIRC in Nov 2010, and perhaps a year later worldwide. Sales outside the US though have been meagre and dropping rapidly so I include them in total sales but do not try to match time periods.

So, from Volt launch until today about 32 months have passed. 49k Volt/Amera have been produced, and about 40k sold. That works out to an average monthly sale rate of 1250 cars a month.
Keep in mind this includes fleet and US government sales. It also includes HOV access in major US markets which is yet another contextual difference the Prius did not have in those years.

Starting from 2000, Prius sales were about 100k over 36 months worlwide. That rate is 2777 cars a month.

So to date, averaged ~ over the first 3 years, the Volt is lagging more than 2:1
Moreover, the Prius had an fast acceleration trend in sales in it's 4rth year to 3600 sales a month,
And in 2004 (including a model change in October) sales increased to over 10,000 cars a month.


----
And with this post, I'm done.
The Volt is done, too; at least in its current incarnation.

 

From "2000" ??? <grins>

Bob Wilson

 

Why from 2000 for the Prius ? That was the first year Prius left Japan, at least in terms of sales through Toyota dealerships.