Featured Dashboard summary December 2017

thank you bob, nice to see model 3 crack a thousand.

i wonder if the clarity will put the kibosh on accord hybrid?

 

What’s really weird is, one can only lease. The Clarity.

 

yeah, i don't get that.

 

I assume the December plug-in sales were up due to panic over possible loss of Federal tax credits. Presumably we may see a dip in Jan/Feb for the opposite reason (the tax credits are still the same)..

 

The BEV and FCEV are lease only, and are also only in California. The nationwide PHEV can be bought.

I don't see the PHEV hurting the Accord hybrid sales much. There'll be some that might get it because incentives make it less than the Accord, but if they don't want a plug, the Accord is the only option.

They would have spiked just because of people buying them for tax time.

 

This is probably not panic at all. It is simply seasonality. 11,000 more plug ins were sold in december 2016 than november. In 2017 the december spike was less at 9,000 more than november. The reason for less of a spike may be that people were waiting for the model 3, new leaf, and more bolt inventory. We will see a January and February drop in plug-ins as we have every year. March will be the key month as we will see if tesla can actually make a lot of model 3s and if the other car makers have 2018 inventory at the right dealerships.

 

Unfortunately in a 4 month tally, seasonal variations get completely lost.
Looking at year over year sales data, there is always a peak at the end of the year, and a slump at the start of the year.
Generally January sales of plugin vehicles as a whole, is about half of the preceding December.
This year may be a bit different with the Model 3 production ramping up and the January release of the 2nd gen Leaf. We should see soon

 

This is true even for non-plug ins. At least in the past when new model years arrived to the dealers closer to the end of the year, and the last year models needed to be cleared off.

 

January will see another slump. Non-tesla dealers are incentive to sell at the end of the year, and the tax credit helps them with plug-ins. Some plug-ins have inventory of last years models that they discount.

In tesla land, they export more model S and X production in January, as it takes time to ship, and they want to recognize revenue in the quarter. This shifts to more domestic deliveries in March. The model 3 increased production won't be enough to make up for it. They are still having problems at the factory, but I expect march will be a big month for the model 3 sales, but they may manage them in the US so they don't cross 200,000 vehicle until april. That will give them 3 full months more of tax credits, versus going over the limit in march.

 

^^^OK sure normal year-end, but if you read the Toyota Prime posts here, we had several folks rushing to buy due to tax bill., and Prime does look good for December.

 

Sure prime sales were likely increased by the fear, but that is only a tiny part of the plug-in market. Prime sales in December were 586 units more than November. Even if all of that was the fear of tax credit leaving its only 2% of plug-in sales in december.

 

Oh, absolutely!
I wasn’t clear. I don’t expect there to be no slump. Just that the expanding availability of the Bolt (hopefully), the quick release of the second gen Leaf (again, a hope) and the increasing production of the Model 3 will make the slump less than it normally is.

 

Go Camry, GO!

 

You are suggesting Toyota Prime buyers were the only plug-in buyers with concern about the tax law changes.
Could be true, we certainly had a lot of concern on these pages. I just assumed that was common to all plug-ins.

 

agreed, i doubt prime buyers were any different than other plug in buyers who could take advantage of the tax credit.
how many? no way of knowing.

 

I am suggesting that model 3 and leaf potential customers hurt december sales because they did not fear enough to buy a different car because there choice was not available. Fear didn't help sales as much as lack of availability of the 2018 leaf, model 3, clarity phev, etc. hurt sales. You can't say the fear helped many of the other cars since the ford energis, volt, tesla model S, tesla model X, etc did worse in December 2017 versus December 2016.

Which means that yes, prime buyers were different than volt and ford energi buyers, they bought more, and different than those that pushed the purchase until 2018 waiting for a model 3, or 40 kwh leaf, or clarity phev. December 2017 was higher than 2016 by a smaller percentage than most months last year.

 

do we know how many model 3 potential customers gave up and bought something else?

 

No but it likely was not a high percentage. Remember few of us expected to be able to buy the car in 2017, it was always 2018, but I expected to be able to order by now, and that is delayed, but should be soon.

We do have some of the new January numbers. It looks like its shaping up to be a lot like last year.
January 2018 Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales Report Card