New Sales Data Proves America Wants Electrified Cars

While 2024 is definitely the “Year of the Hybrid,” there’s also some good news in the sales reports for regular EVs, which did a little better in Q2 than was maybe expected. In particular, GM was able to have a strong quarter without a lot of Bolt sales. The shortcut that Toyota uses is to refer to anything with an electric motor as “electrified,” and it might be helpful to utilize that same term here when thinking about car sales right now.

Can we talk about the Maverick? There’s evidence to suggest that we can, at length. So I’m going to do more of that, because it’s helpful and fun. While we’re looking at sales reports, the Mirai outsold the Prius in June. Whaaaaat?

And, finally, Stellantis. Ugh. It’s bad, y’all. It’s so bad the best brands (year-over-year) are the Italian ones.

GM Sells More EVs In A Quarter Than Ever, Ford Sells A Bunch Of Hybrids, Stellantis Sells A Bunch Of PHEVs

To justify the headline, people are buying things with electric motors. Whether that’s PHEVs, regular hybrids (I just bought one, more to come on that), or electric cars, automakers are generally doing better, or, at least, not doing as poorly as people thought.

With a few exceptions (Polestar, Lucid), almost everyone non-Tesla who sells anything electrified did better on a quarterly basis. Tesla was down quarter-over-quarter as expected, but they did slightly better than analysts assumed and Tesla is its own weird planet.

I’d look at more monthly data, but the CDK Global ransomware disaster has made it difficult to draw any big conclusions about June, and, besides, quarterly data is better and fuller.

Let’s start with General Motors, which is finally starting to come out on the other side of its Ultium issues and is producing cars at a faster clip. Even with only a handful of leftover Bolts to sell, GM says its brands delivered a record 21,930 electric cars in Q2 of 2024, up 34% from Q1 and up 40% year-over-year.

What are those cars? About 7,200 Lyriqs, 6,600 Blazer EVs, 2,900 Hummer EVs, 2,200 Silverado EVs, 1,000 Equinox EVs, and 490 Brightdrops. That Equinox EV number reflects that the crossover just went on sale. I suspect that number will go up a lot next quarter as the company ramps up deliveries. Overall, GM was only up 0.6% year-over-year for all vehicles, buoyed by some trucks and a lot of Buicks, so the growth is a good sign.

Ford’s EVs were also up 61.4% year-over-year compared to a 55.6% increase in hybrid sales and a 5.0% drop in internal combustion-powered vehicles.

And Stellantis? They had a terrible quarter, which I’ll get into later in this post, but at least PHEV sales were good with the company now holding four-out-of-five biggest PHEV spots on the market, with only the RAV4 PHEV sneaking in there. Toyota had some weirdness this quarter and I. want to talk about that as well.

Does this mean there’s going to be a straight line upwards for EVs and hybrids? It’s probably going to be rocky, and one good quarter a streak does not make, but it’s likely that increased consumer preferences and lower costs, combined with government requirements, will push more and more consumers into hybrids, PHEVs, and BEVs every year.

The Ford Maverick Will Solve All Our Problems

Here’s a graphic showing how many people buying Maverick Hybrids are coming from non-Ford buyers and what they’re trading in, which is fun data. With 37 MPG combined, most non-EVs and hybrids have worse fuel economy, so the majority of people trading in a vehicle are going to see an improvement in efficiency.

The range here is pretty broad and features slightly fewer mid-size trucks than I’d guess and way more midsize cars and large SUVs than I’d have assumed. We don’t have a breakdown from Ford about where its customers are coming from, but I’d guess Escapes and Rangers might be in the mix.

Ford is mostly past its supply chain and production issues with the Ford Maverick so the 38,052 trucks it sold in Q2 2024 is a big number, representing an 81% increase year-over-year for Q2, which is consistent with Q1. Through the first half of the year, about 40,420 Maverick Hybrids have been sold, which is more than half of the 77,113 Mavericks sold in total.

The F-150 Hybrid isn’t doing quite that well, with 33,674 of them sold, but numbers are up 38% and there’s a good reason to think that the F-150 Hybrid will eventually start outselling the Maverick Hybrid. As mentioned, the Mach-E, E-Transit, and F-150 Lightning are also seeing more sales, but in total the Hybrid-to-EV ratio is still 2-to-1 for Ford.

Toyota Mirai Outsells Prius In June!

For some reason, 20 people bought the much-maligned (see above), hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai. Presumably, all these consumers live in California and, I hope, took advantage of some sort of sweet lease deal that made the car almost free.

Those 20 people represent a bigger number than the 13 people who ended up with the excellent Toyota Prius. See the numbers below:

What’s going on here?

From a Toyota spokesperson:

We issued a global recall for Prius and Prius Prime in April (Release). There was a stop sale, and we identified a remedy and production restarted last month in Japan, so we expect units to start arriving in the U.S. later this month and into August.  Prius customers are loyal and we anticipate sales to rebound later this summer and into the fall.

This is a weird fluke, and I’m guessing the Mirai will never outsell the Prius again.

Stellantis Is, Woof, It’s Bad

You can look at the Stellantis sales numbers if you want, and maybe you can find some sort of good news here I’m missing. Ram is down 26%, Chrysler is down 19%, Jeep is down 19%, and Dodge is down 17%. Obviously, the new and very good 2025 Dodge Ram 1500 is coming. That’ll help.

Stellantis is in a transition period as it waits for new product and tries to off-load the aging cars it’s currently sitting on, so this maybe won’t be permanent. But let’s look at all the cars/brands that saw increases this last quarter, because there are so few of them we can do them individually (Stellantis lists 32 models for sale in the United States and only five saw increases in the quarter).

Right up top, the new electric Fiat 500 looks good, even if it’s a little pricey. Fiat sold all of 1 Fiat 500 last year, so the 163 new Fiat 500s sold represent a 16,200% increase. Great work.  Also, 153 Fiat 500X crossovers were moved, up from 143 in Q2 of 2023. Who bought them? No idea.

The Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer saw sales increases of 107% and 24%, respectively. Heavy discounting and Jeep offering dealers $10,000 for every Grand Wagoneer they move can’t hurt.

What else do we have? The Alfa Tonale! 887 people bought them, up from 117 in Q2 of 2023 when they’d just gone on sale, so I’m not even sure that counts.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Am I bad to the bone? Hell yeah, but instead of that, let’s listen to “Move it on Over” by George Thorogood and the Destroyers this morning. This is a suggestion from our pal Thad, who thought it was high time I enjoyed this track. I also have a vague memory of maybe being taken to a George Thorogood concert when I was much younger and my dad worked concert security. My dad always reads this, so I’m sure he’ll tell me if I’m wrong.

The Big Question

Any guesses as to what I ended up buying?