Almost 1.2 million new EVs hit the road in the US in 2023

According to estimates by automotive research company Kelley Blue Book, Tesla sold 654,888 vehicles in the US last year. That accounts for a segment share of 55.1 per cent. Compared to 2022, the carmaker sold 25.4 per cent more vehicles (522,388 units in 2022).

The best-seller among the Tesla EVs was the Model Y. It was sold 394,497 times, accounting for 33.2 per cent of the segment share. It was also the most sold EV in the US in 2023. Second place goes to another Tesla – the Model 3. It sold 220,910 times, accounting for 18.6 per cent of EVs sod in the US last year.

Just for completion: The carmaker sold 23,015 units of the Model X (1.9 per cent) and 16,466 units of the Model S (1.4 per cent).

In the best-seller ranking, there is a big gap between second and third place. The latter goes to the Chevy Bolt EV/EUV, with 62,045 units sold in 2023. It accounts for 5.2 per cent of the segment share. Ford sold 40,771 units of its Mustang Mach-E, and the Volkswagen ID.4 completes the Top 5, with 37,789 units sold.

Most carmakers sold more BEVs in 2023 than in 2022, except Mazda, Mini, and Jaguar. Mazda sold only 100 units of its Mazda MX-30, compared to 324 units in 2022. That is a drop of 69.1 per cent. Mini had sold 3,584 Mini Coopers in 2022. Last year, the vehicle was only bought 2,770 times. Jaguar loss is almost negligible. It sold 298 units of the I-Pace in 2022 and 297 units – so only one less EV – in 2023.

BEV market share continues to grow – but slowly

According to Kelley Blue Book estimates, the EV share of the total US vehicle market was 7.6 per cent in 2023. That is a slight increase compared to the year prior, when EVs accounted for 5.9 per cent of all cars sold in the US.

However, as Cox Automotive points out, the EV market in the US is growing, but it is not growing as fast as in the previous years.

For example: Q4/2023 saw a record in both volumes and share, with 317,168 EVs sold (8.1 per cent). That means EV sales in Q4 increased 40 per cent year over year. In Q3, the industry posted a 49 per cent gain in Q3, and EV sales were up 52 per cent YoY in Q4/2022.

The industry research company reckons, that EV uptake will slow down even more that in Q1/2024, “we may even report the first quarter-over-quarter sales decline in more than three years.”

Update 23 January 2024

Around 4.7 million electric cars and plug-in hybrids were sold in the USA by the end of 2023. As reported above, over 1.4 million new vehicles were registered in 2023, 80 per cent of which were BEVs.

More December data is also now available regarding the different types of plug-in vehicles: hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) hit a registration number of 117,690 vehicles in December 2023, up 70 per cent from the year before. In total, 4,684,128 PHEVs and BEVs have been sold since 2010.

Fuel cell electric vehicles have not been so successful, but did not disappear entirely: 25 Hyundai Nexo and 23 Toyota Mirai were sold over December 2023, contributing to the 2978 FCEV cumulative total for 2023. Since 2014, 17,967 FCEVs have been sold in the USA.

The Argonne National Laboratory also made an assessment of the battery industry in the USA: “As of January 2024, manufacturers in the United States could supply around 10 million new light duty plug-in electric vehicles each year by 2030, assuming an average pack size of 80-100 kWh,” the research institute writes.

coxautoinc.com, coxautoinc.com (Kelley Blue Book EV sales report; PDF), anl.gov (update)