sales

Sometime yesterday or today, the 100,000th modern plug-in electric car was delivered to a buyer somewhere in the U.S. The exact buyer and car will likely never be known. But any electric-car buyer taking delivery on either day can be forgiven for claiming a small share of the glory. The first...

Ford's hybrid sales have been on a roll this year, with two new models for 2013 now in showrooms across the country. The company sold almost 30,000 Ford and Lincoln hybrids from January through April, just about triple the number in its best comparable previous period, which was 2011. That led some...

Most Canadians will remember last month for the introduction of the country's new $5 and $10 bills, which arrived just in time for the playoff-hockey betting season. Canadian electric vehicle enthusiasts may remember April 2013, on the other hand, as the month the Toyota Prius Plug-in fell into...

There's a new hybrid in the mix these days--or at least a new version of one that's been on the market for a couple of years. The 2013 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid has now, finally, rolled out nationwide. It follows a troubled launch for the latest generation MKZ mid-size luxury sedan that even Lincoln...

Sales of plug-in electric cars in April continued at roughly the same pace as in March, with sales likely totaling about 7,500 cars. Last year's first- and third-place plug-ins, the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, are now pacing each other in sales. Their year-to-date totals are separated by less than...

If last month's U.S. plug-in electric car sales figures could be characterized as "March Madness" -- Leaf sales tripled, Tesla took the Q1 sales crown, but the Mitsubishi i-MiEV was down 90 percent -- the Canadian market was one of "March Modestness". Sales were up, and there were a few surprises...

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...

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...

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...

Americans and Canadians alike returned to work this week after a festive St. Patrick's Day. For sales of plug-in electric vehicles in Canada, the (idiomatic, good) luck of the Irish arrived for one U.S. automaker. General Motors sold 51 Chevrolet Volts in Canada in February, up slightly from its...

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...

Earlier this month, we covered January's plug-in electric car sales in the U.S., noting that sales fell by about half from the last few months of the prior year. As a percentage, plug-in cars were 0.3 percent of the American market in January 2013--down from 0.5 percent in December, but still twice...

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...

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...

Sales of plug-in electric cars tripled last year, so how's the New Year looking? Based on January sales, being reported throughout the day by automakers, the year is starting slowly. General Motors said it delivered 1,140 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric cars last month. That's more than the...

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...

If 2011 was the year of overoptimism for electric-car sales, and 2012 was Sophomore Slump after the inevitable shortfall, will 2013 be the year of realism? That really depends on what the world's leading electric-car maker, Nissan, sells this year. Let's recap. Several years ago, Nissan said that...

U.S. car buyers took home about 17,500 plug-in electric cars in 2011. Last year, the numbers got better. A lot better. In 2012, about 53,000 electric cars were likely sold--essentially triple the prior year's number. Not bad, huh? We know that at least 50,000 sales of plug-in cars will have been...

Eco-minded shoppers have seen environmental issues take up more space in the news, and they've known that it was simply a matter of time before those concerns began affecting the sorts of vehicles we drive. Now, mainstream consumers are beginning to see the light. The change hasn't come overnight...

You might not know it from general media coverage, but plug-in electric-car sales are actually doing pretty well. Still, people get impatient, and electric-car and environmental advocates want more, faster. So what are the best ways to boost adoption of plug-in cars? Education and awareness are the...