sales

Have we just seen the first crack in the facade of auto-dealer opposition to Tesla Motors selling cars directly to retail buyers? An opinion piece in auto-industry trade journal Ward's Auto concludes with the following remarkable sentences: We can keep Tesla busy defending what are basically...

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...

The best-selling electric car in the world, the Nissan Leaf, logged its best-ever U.S. sales in August, selling a record 3,186 units. This marks its 18th consecutive month of year-over-year sales increases, and brings the eight-month total to 18,941 and the total sold in almost four years to more...

You see a lot in the press these days about the low sales of plug-in electric cars. While deliveries have risen every year--and have outpaced hybrid sales at the same point after launch--electric cars clearly remain only a tiny piece of the global car market today. But those low sales nonetheless...

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...

The Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car remains Canada's plug-in sales champion, but the Nissan Leaf battery-electric--the best-selling electric car in history--is coming up fast in its rear-view mirror As consistently as the Toyota Camry tops the U.S. car sales charts, the Chevy Volt leads...

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...

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...

It hasn't reached the heady heights of May's record-breaking sales tally, but Nissan still has the highest-selling mainstream electric vehicle on the market. Nissan rounds off the month's sales having moved 2,347 Leafs. That's 770 fewer than May's best-ever Leaf sales total, but it's still a record...

New data suggest hybrid-car sales have peaked.