New car sales

The big news in plug-in car sales for March was Tesla's statement that it delivered "more than 4,750" Model S electric cars from January through March. That news early Monday not only sent stock in Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] soaring, it also cued up an interesting three-way horse race. Those sales...

There was a point, when Toyota Prius and Honda Insights were rolling off dealer lots in their mere hundreds nationwide, that hybrids were easy to dismiss. Now, as sales leap 32 percent in the first two months of this year and market share sits around 4 percent, the humble hybrid has become a real...

When the news is good, you want to get it out there. Last night, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] released a statement saying that it had delivered more than 4,750 Model S cars from January 1 through March 31 of this year. The statement came before the first quarter of 2013 had even technically ended...

In the last few weeks, it's almost become a cliche: drivers in Silicon Valley say they see as many Tesla Model S electric luxury sedans on the roads as they do Nissan Leafs or Chevrolet Volts. With a likely total production of perhaps 6,000 cars thus far, the Model S is outnumbered on U.S. roads by...

Every month we report on sales of plug-in electric cars, which tripled last year over the total in 2011. As virtually every analyst and commentator has pointed out, electric cars have done better in their early years than hybrids did in theirs. So how is it that Car and Driver, the well-known...

Live in the New York area? If you do, you're perfectly placed to get some hefty discounts on Toyota's Prius Plug-In right now. In fact, you're in the right place to get a discount on several green models at the moment, including the regular Prius, as well as Ford C-Max and Fusion hybrids. According...

Texans really like their trucks. It's one of life's constants--the sun will always rise, politicians will always lie, Texans will always buy trucks. That doesn't mean Texan car buyers aren't open to new ideas though, and though it may come as a surprise, hybrid sales are actually increasing at...

It's no secret that Nissan hasn't sold as many battery electric cars over the last two years as it had planned. The company just sold its 50,000th Nissan Leaf last month, but it had hoped to sell up to twice that number between the start of production in late 2010 and the end of last year. Now the...

Own a Nissan Leaf? Nissan wants to thank you for it. 2011 and 2012 Nissan Leaf owners, for their loyalty, will be eligible for $1,000 off any model in Nissan's lineup. The offer runs through December 31, 2014, so you've plenty of time to decide. Nissan's research shows most Leaf owners are new to...

U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars continued at a reduced level, as seems to happen every winter. The best-selling electric car, the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, logged deliveries of 1,626 units, compared to 1,140 last month. That's a better number than the 1,023 Volts sold in...

Nissan's Leaf electric car has become the highest-selling electric car of all time. The company has now sold more than 50,000 examples of the Leaf, sold across Japan, Europe and the U.S. Since the car went on sale in 2010, those 50,000 Leaf owners have racked up over 161 million miles. In reality...

Who'da thunk it? Young buyers may love Camaros and Mustangs, but when it comes to smaller cars, American brands have traditionally played second best to imports. But the Chevrolet Spark minicar is proving much more successful, bucking all the trends. It's even stealing plenty of buyers off its...

Analyzing electric-car sales numbers and prognosticating on them is somewhere between a parlor game and a black art. Now one blogger has applied some Nate Silver-like statistical analysis to try to divine predictive patterns in sales of the Chevrolet Volt, the range-extended electric car that's...

Every month, the University of Michigan sends out its weighted average of the gas mileage of all new cars sold the previous month. And for January, the news is good. The new vehicles sold in the U.S. during January scored a sales-weighted average fuel efficiency of 24.5 mpg. That's up 0.4 mpg from...

It happens every so often: a spate of media reports with gloom-and-doom headlines about what a dismal failure electric cars are. Take, for instance, this morning's in Reuters--"Electric Cars Head Toward Another Dead End"--or a weekend report in The Detroit News entitled "Electric Vehicle Sales...

It's now clear: Volume deliveries of the second version of the 2013 Tesla Model S began this month. That would be the version fitted with the middle of three battery-pack sizes, with a stated energy capacity of 60 kilowatt-hours. The news does not come from Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA], a company that...

It isn't easy bringing a new hybrid to market against the might and experience of Toyota--but Ford is certainly managing. The 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid is setting record hybrid sales numbers for the company, and even beating down Toyota's share of the hybrid segment. The striking styling of the...

The Chevrolet Volt is by far the best-selling plug-in car in the United States. Last year, it represented almost 45 percent of all plug-in electric cars sold during 2012. But how's it doing outside the U.S., compared to the Nissan Leaf--which is sold globally in North America, Asia, and Europe?...

There's no doubt about it: Electric car sales are going up. 2012 saw sales triple compared to 2011, and while the overall number of electric cars will increase in modest amounts, improved education and more choice should ensure a general upward trend. According to Pike Research, there could be as...

We've covered U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars--which tripled last year. Now, as the puck drops on a new hockey season, readers' thoughts might turn to our northern neighbor--and wonder whether Canadians lead or lag their American cousins when it comes to buying plug-in cars. Canada: One-third...