New car sales

Electric-car maker Tesla Motors has shaken up the auto industry in many ways, and it continues to do so. Now, aspects of Tesla's online direct-sales model are starting to influence other companies in the car business--and their executives are saying so--even as lobbyists for franchised car...

In the U.S., diesel engines have long been established in pickup trucks. In passenger cars, however, they've remained a small part of the overall market. But diesels seem to be doing well in another segment: larger SUVs, particularly those from luxury makers, like Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz...

With a handful of new models coming this year, Toyota's "youth brand" Scion is clearing the decks. One of the casualties is its unsuccessful iQ minicar. The little car, often mistaken for the two-seat Smart ForTwo but actually a "3 + 1-seater" (at least technically), never met its sales goals. Last...

Introduced in Germany late in 2013, and on sale in North America starting last May, the BMW i3 electric car has produced sales figures higher than some analysts expected. Now the carmaker has said that it sold more than 16,000 i3s during calendar 2014, putting the little electric minicar among the...

While vehicle registration data won't arrive for another few weeks, we cautiously expect Tesla Model S to win December's Canadian plug-in sales sweepstakes. Both the Chevrolet Volt (at 62 range-extended electric cars sold) and Nissan Leaf (64 battery-electric vehicles) closed the year with modest...

There's been a lot of conventional wisdom floating around lately. In this case, it's the notion that electric car sales will plummet with the arrival of vastly lower gasoline prices. We'd suggest that perhaps this is not quite as much of a foregone conclusion as many pundits think. DON'T MISS...

The Wards Auto Fuel Economy Index recorded a decrease in new-car average fuel economy in November compared to the same time last year.

Late in October, an interesting thing happened in Germany: Audi quietly killed off the hybrid version of its A6 luxury sedan. The model had been around for three years, and though it was initially expected to be sold in the U.S., that never actually happened. DON'T MISS: Californians Now Buy A...

The Nissan Leaf seems to have won its second consecutive Canadian sales title in November, bringing fuel-free mobility to another 103 drivers. While down slightly from October's 113 units, this is about what one would expect, given that Canadian auto sales tend to tail off at the end of the year...

Sales of plug-in electric cars continued at a steady pace in November, reflecting continued strong vehicle sales of all types in the U.S. market. The Nissan Leaf set a new November record at 2,687 cars sold, its 22nd straight month of sales increases year-over-year, while the Chevy Volt delivered...

China has been the world's largest auto market for several years now, with 18 million passenger cars and another 4 million commercial vehicles sold there last year. But until recently, sales of plug-in electric cars have lagged those in the U.S. (whose market seems likely to be around 17 million...

Launching entirely new types of cars is expensive, time-consuming, and challenging--as Toyota could have told Chevrolet and Nissan during 2010. Toyota's sales of its early Prius hybrid-electric cars, however, may offer hope to electric-car fans disappointed at modest sales of the two affordable...

Never let it be said that AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson doesn't speak his mind. His latest stunner came last week, when he deemed auto-dealer efforts to ban all direct sales by Tesla Motors state by state "unnecessary protectionism." In doing so, Jackson broke ranks with the vast array of auto-dealer...

Well, September vehicle registration data for Canada has now arrived, and the Tesla Model S simply crushed all competition with 194 sales. The September numbers no doubt got a tailwind from deliveries that would've taken place in August (a far-below-average 25 sales) but had to be delayed on...

Two years ago, we pointed out that several electric cars now on sale were purely "compliance cars," built in minimal numbers purely to comply with California rules that require sales of zero-emission vehicles. But almost four years after the first Nissan Leaf went on sale in December 2010, it's...

It all started when stock analysts circulating an estimate from auto-industry trade journal Ward's Auto that Tesla's U.S. sales were down 26 percent for the first nine months of 2014, compared to the same period in 2013.. It was covered in a Wall Street Journal story on the company's new lower-cost...

Are car dealers winning battles against Tesla Motors, and its direct-sales model, that will set them up to lose the bigger war? For almost five years, state dealer associations have lobbied legislators to change laws to make Tesla's direct-sales model illegal, requiring that all new cars be sold...

Toyota not only invented the modern hybrid-electric vehicle, but it has sold more hybrid cars than any other automaker. Now the Japanese company has crossed a new milestone: It has delivered more than 7 million hybrid cars since its first Prius was bought by a Japanese driver in 1997. The news came...

During September, another 145 Chevrolet Volts were sold in Canada--continuing the slow but steady arrival of plug-in electric cars onto the nation's roads. While this would ordinarily be enough to crown Chevy's range-extended electric car with another first-place sales finish for the month, the...

With U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars now averaging more than 10,000 vehicles each month, September sales achieved that mark but fell short of the sizzling pace of the last two months. Sales of the Nissan Leaf totaled 2,881 last month, bringing year-to-date deliveries to 21,882. That's almost a...