Volt Sales Figures

One of the things hurting both leaf and Volt sales is the agresive disinformation compaigns trying to discred EV and the Obhama adminsitraiton


Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield stays on task with "What Do Consumers Really Think Of Electric Cars? We Find Out":

What Do Consumers Really Think Of Electric Cars? We Find Out

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The spread of that disinformation is amazing.That coupled with dropping gas prices (its down to 2.80 around here) and people are not going to consider an EV. They don't do research, they just go with what they "know"...

 

Tundra down, but Tacoma up.
Silverado down but Colorado up.

Overall I expect VW diesel sales increased largely because of the new Passat TDI. Diesel makes a big difference in larger car. Overall, Jetta sedan sales fell, Sportwagen sales fell.

Cruze was also up, Civic was up big (auto-journalists know nothing), Elantra down (but Hyundai has supply limitations), Corolla down (it's old).

Prius sales were still up compared to a year ago. But, I suspect some of the sales were taken away by the excellent late-year deals at the end of 2011: dealers were shifting stock to hit targets and make way for the 2012. The early v rush is over. But, I also wouldn't be surprised to see some potential Prius buyers waiting to take a look at the c.

 

Gas prices in your neck of the woods are disconnected from most other areas. It's rising here. Up to $3.60 again.

 

That's what mules and prototypes are for. EPA use the standard from Society of Automotive Engineers. GM released Volt before SAE finalized the standard. It is not about the waiting but working together with various groups and agencies.

Remember, Prius PHV prototype was out on the road before the Volt. The owner manual was done. It got CARB emission certification with eAT-PZEV. It even qualified for the HOV lane. It was pretty much production ready. The only thing missing was the EPA label. I believe Toyota pulled it because they felt more data is needed and have the standard finalized for EPA to come up with a proper label.

I remember Nissan gave a range with various driving conditions. GM did the infamous 230 MPG stunt.

P.S: People are taking the emoticons too seriously.

 

I wonder if the entire industry truck fell. The gas price increased.

 

The taco increased because of lack of the ranger. I was using the term for light trucks, which for toyota includes the highlander, rav4, and 4 runner. When all are included toyota light trusks are down 4.4% compared to a year earlier, while cars increased 20.1%. Similarly gm light trucks had a 6% decline. These should be measured against a 11% average gain in vehicle sales from a year earlier, so the truck/suv declines for these automakers are actually larger in terms of vehicle market share. Chyrsler, VW, and Hyundai increased market share in the us, while everyone else lost. GM was the biggest loser, but is trying to maintain profit margins.

The diesel take rate rose 30% to 17% of these vehicles sold. I expect that although jettas had a slight decline, the amount of jetta diesels should have had double diget growth.

volt and leaf were also up from a year ago. That doesn't mean that these vehicles did not meet expectations. Prius added the v model, had inventory, but still decreased in market share. Its hard not to think that some of these potential prius buyers bought other small cars that got around 40mpg highway instead of the hybrid.

 

The F series is still doing well. Likely because it is one of the most efficient trucks available, and both V6s have been popular.

How much was that do to incentives because of the reports?

Or choose to wait with the Prius c and Ford hybrid announcements.

 

Recently gas prices declined and new car fuel economy also declined. This was driven by people getting larger vehicles like trucks and crossovers. (truck from CAFE meaning is quite different from what many people think of when they hear the word truck)

 

Ranger sales were up about 2k compared to last year. It's not just the Ranger.

Toyota SUVs sales have declined consistently. The RAV4 sales were actually relatively good, boosted slightly by the new model.

Although Chrysler SUV sales are growing, the big competition is from Ford's updated SUVs that are selling really well

What's interesting though is that although GM light truck sales dropped, the Equinox is still growing. And GM cars grew.

I really think the diesel growth is in the Passat rather than the Jetta. The Passat accounts for 2/3 of the 50% VW sales growth, so it wouldn't take an extraordinary take rate to increase the diesel take for VW and since the benefit of diesel is much greater in the Passat than in smaller cars it would make sense that the take rate would be higher.

With some strong compact sales it would seem so, but the key question is what were buyers replacing? With cars being kept longer than ever we're not really going to know the true market share for a few more years.

 

I don't know, but if buyers are really swayed by incentives the Corolla would be the compact leader.

 

It isn't just gas prices to be concerned about, it's the power bills. Your house electricity is tied to the price of oil now--just like gas prices. And it changes quarterly. My power bill is up 22.5% this year vs same time last year. Gas prices at the pump fluctuate up to 20 cents a gallon from day to day.Since the oil futures price is partly speculative, we are paying inflated prices for electric power as well as gasoline.

It's disconcerting that the American media doesn't talk about these things. I called up my power company and they told me their rates are now indexed quarterly to oil futures prices. The lack of proper information is a source of frustration, I suspect, for many Americans. You can see it in the politics.

 

Since you seem interested, here is the much more complete list. I think it comes through.

Auto Sales - Markets Data Center - WSJ.com

Ranger is orphaned, and fords lack of interest has been called out for tacoma's rise. It looks like the ranger did take a dead cat bounce. Pick ups are up 9.8% led by the smaller ones. These numbers are a little different than from the article, but it has gm cars growing 2.7% while overall car sales grew 19.9% compared to january 2011. Light Trucks (pickups, suvs, crossover subset) were only up 3.7%.

 

You might want to visit
PA Power Switch - Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission

Most of PA has the right to change power companies.

PA uses virtually no oil for electricity generation, see
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/state-regs/pdf/Pennsylvania.pdf

 

Dr. Innovation already said it, but you are wrong. No one uses petroleum for electricity except for peaker plants. If you are on a local utility it is likely that they want out of the business and want to be paid only for transmission and distribution. I changed my power provider because they were raising rates as well, but I still pay them the T&D fee. Their prices were so much higher that I think they just assumed that either people would be clueless and stay on, or they could get out of the financial market that electricity has become since deregulation. Brought to you be the economists that love free markets to bring electricity prices down. It did not work, but boy it was fun and complicated.

PS I should say that only in Hawaii does petroleum make upa significant portion of electricity production.

 

Yes, what I've seen consistently over the last year or two is that while some analysts kept repeating the mantra about Detroit being "reliant on trucks" the market was continuing to shift to high fuel economy vehicles, even where people were buying "light trucks". F-series sales are more v6 than v8, Ford has seen spectacular growth in the Escape and Explorer (which lead their segments) and although Chrysler sales have grown rapidly they're starting from a lower base, have improved their vehicles and still have heavy discounting. Across the board manufacturers are still having to discount heavily to shift the pick-ups and they have high inventory.

GM's car sales growth has been in the B (Sonic) and C (Cruze) segments, its their older D and F segments vehicles that are stagnant or dropping. The competition in B to F is fierce and older vehicles need heavy discounting to compete.

If gas prices keep rising I just see the trend continuing. There are a lot of old SUVs on the roads from the cheap gas era of the early 2000's and it'll take a while before their owners have replaced them all and we can truly see what the shape of the market is.

 

The peak plants here are likely natural gas cogens.

You can also move into Quakertown. The township is the power company, and is exempt from the deregulation.

 

Although Hawaii has the largest % of electricity from oil, Untitled Document claims

 

So do you think more Volts or Pips were delivered in February?

Apparently 1023 Volts were.

 

Dianne sold a handful of Prius PHV yesterday. I am not sure it'll be in the Feb sales.

What do you think Volt's Feb number will be?

 

I edited the post above to show the February sales of Volts at 1,023. My guess is Volt sales beat Pip sales by about 1010 units. (completely tongue in cheek of course, I know there were only a handful of deliveries which will probably get counted in March anyway).