Tesla sales keep slipping — but it’s still dominating the EV market
Tesla might have had a little win Thursday when it emerged that the Cybertruck was officially the second-best-selling electric pickup truck in America, but it isn’t quite out of the woods just yet. After reporting a massive 25% drop in new car registrations in February, the declines are continuing for the electric vehicle maker.
In March, Tesla reported that new car registrations were down a further 12% compared with the same period last year, reports Automotive News. In total, more than 50,000 new Tesla cars were registered in March here in America. As Automotive News explains:
Tesla had a 12 percent decline in March registrations compared with the same month last year to 50,474, the data showed. In February, Tesla suffered a 25 percent drop compared with the year-earlier month.
“There’s a lot of other brands we knew were coming [with EVs] and they’re here and they’re competitive” said Tom Libby, associate director of industry analysis at S&P Global Mobility. “When Tesla had 80 percent of the EV market, the standard thinking was that it couldn’t last.”
Tesla’s share of the EV segment fell to 52.4 percent in March from 61.5 percent in the year-earlier month, S&P Global Mobility said. Tesla accounted for 80 percent of electric vehicles sold in the U.S. in the 2020 calendar year.
That 52.4% share of the market does, of course, mean that the declines at Tesla aren’t enough to take away its title as best-selling EV maker in America. In fact, the company is so far ahead that there’s hardly any contest, really.
While Tesla was out selling 50,000 new EVs, Ford was struggling to hit 10,000 EVs sold in second place. Behind it was Hyundai, which shifted 5,686 electric cars in March and BMW sold 4,246 electric models.
A version of this article originally appeared on Jalopnik’s The Morning Shift.