New car sales

In February, the Canadian province of British Columbia became one of few areas of the world to allow its plug-in electric vehicle purchase incentives to expire. The cause was simple: The initial allocation of funds ran out, and the incentive was not renewed with further funding. Five months of...

Mercedes-Benz is adding production capacity to keep up with CLA demand.

California has hit a major plug-in car milestone this week: Since the first electric vehicle was sold back in 2010, more than 100,000 others have now hit the streets. The figures have been compiled by the California Plug-In Electric Vehicle Collaborative. The number is impressive on its own, but...

In August, the Chevy Volt won the Canadian plug-in sales derby yet again – a category dominance that brings to mind the Ford F-150's 48-year-reign(!) atop truck sales, in the land of the Maple Leaf. Funnily enough, it's actually the French fleur-de-lis which is responsible for these...

It's embarrassing when an automaker has to reduce its EPA gas-mileage ratings after being investigated by the agency, as Ford did in August 2013 for its 2013 and 2014 C-Max Hybrid. It's even more embarrassing when the company has to cut the rating on those vehicles again--along with five...

Hybrid sales might have been slow to take off in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but there are no such concerns these days. In the first half of 2014, Japanese automaker Toyota sold 665,740 hybrid vehicles globally--beating last year's record figure by a full four percent over the same period. As...

Chinese automaker BYD was the first car company in the world to put a plug-in hybrid passenger car into production, a couple of years before the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car hit the road. Despite several hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery-electric product lines, however, the vast...

The 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid received very positive reviews when it was launched almost a year ago. Its EPA fuel-efficiency rating of 47 mpg combined approaches that of the 50-mpg Toyota Prius, but the Accord is a more conventional looking mid-size sedan--a plus for many buyers. Yet sales have been...

Car dealers maximize their profits by selling the highest number of cars at the highest possible prices in the least possible time. Plug-in electric cars are unfamiliar to most buyers, and require more explanation--sometimes a great deal more--along with specific types of support during and after...

Sales of plug-in electric cars in the U.S. continued their rise in July, as Nissan delivered more than 3,000 Leaf battery electric cars and Chevy more than 2,000 Volt range-extended electrics. It's was only the second time that the two cars together have sold more than 5,000 units in a single...

Tesla Motors built 8,763 Model S electric cars and delivered 7,579 of them to customers during the second quarter, according to just-released second-quarter results. It expects to build about 9,000 cars this quarter, and deliver 7,800, largely due to a two-week production shutdown for retooling at...

The 2014 Chevrolet Cruze Diesel went on sale almost a year ago, the first diesel passenger car sold by General Motors in 28 years. Hopes were high for the Cruze with the European turbodiesel engine, which effectively competed with the long-established Volkswagen Jetta TDI, the only other mainstream...

SUV and crossover sales outpace sedan sales for the first time ever.

The 2014 BMW i3 electric car has a unique feature offered by no other vehicle in the world: Buyers can choose to have it as a battery-electric vehicle, or add an optional range-extending engine that roughly doubles its rated electric range of 81 miles. With the i3 on sale now for two months, a mix...

To borrow from an old soccer saying, plug-in electric car sales in Canada are a game in which about a dozen models compete, and the Chevy Volt wins. But in the broader competition with combustion, based on current trends, the Canadian market looks ripe to hit a nice round milestone by the end of...

The 2014 BMW i3 is proving to be very effective at luring new buyers to BMW--buyers who haven't before owned one of its cars. Such buyers, known as conquests, are highly valued by carmakers, who have a much better chance of retaining a customer if they're already driving one of its vehicles. The...

May was a great month for Canadian plug-in electric vehicle sales, as it was in the United States--where sales of 3,117 Nissan Leafs represented the second-highest monthly sales ever for any car that plugs in. On the Canadian side of the border, our tracking showed the nation's electric-car fleet...

Well, chalk up another first for Nissan: It sold 3,117 Leaf electric cars in the U.S. last month. That's not only its best-ever one-month sales performance, but it's the first time any carmaker has sold more than 3,000 battery plug-in electric cars in a month in this country--ever. (August 2013...

Tesla Motors released its first-quarter earnings this afternoon, logging revenue of $713 million on deliveries of 6,457 Model S electric cars. That's essentially the number it had said it would sell in the quarter, but the total is slightly down from the record 6,892 sold in the prior quarter. It...

This Wednesday, Tesla Motors will release its first-quarter financial results--one part of which will be its electric-car sales total from January through March. If the usual practice holds true, Tesla will provide a single global sales total, not breaking it down by market or month as other...