California auto sales stall
-November 26,2019-
Californians are buying fewer hybrid or electric vehicles in the state this year. But by percentage this category’s market share is up. That’s because overall new car sales are down about 5.1% for all types of new vehicles in 2019 when compared to the year before.
The market share for hybrid and electric vehicles is up to 13.4% of all sales through the first nine months of 2019 says the California New Car Dealers Assn. That’s up from just 7.7% in 2016 and 12.0% of all sales in 2018.
This year hybrid and electric car sales by market share were up but plug-in hybrids fell.
By percent the fastest growing brand of all types of vehicles sold in the state was Tesla up by 32%.This past week Tesla introduced a new pick-up truck that will be sold this coming year. News reports says “ During a presentation of the Tesla Cybertruck last week, the Californian company displayed a video with the electric pickup in a tug of war with a Ford F-150. The short clip showed a comfortable win for the futuristic EV truck against what is currently the best-selling vehicle in the United States.” Now there may be a rematch.
An industry sources says “Almost half of US EV sales are in California, where state and local incentives are added to the federal tax credit and a complicated Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate requires that EVs be a certain percentage of sales.”
Sales slump continues for all cars
Overall new vehicle registrations in the Golden State have been down for 10 consecutive quarters says the dealer association
Passenger car sales fell by 10.8% in the latest quarter while light high truck sales declined only slightly.
The state will likely see new registrations of 1.91 million this year compared to a high of 2.09 million units in 2016.
The latest report says Toyota,Honda and Ford are market leaders here. Falling the most this quarter is the Chrysler brand – down 40%. VW sales have come back – up 6.3% this year.
Californians are buying more light trucks than a passenger cars and used truck sales were up nearly 4% The Civic is best selling used vehicle.
The slump in new car sales are mostly blamed on sticker shock
The LA Times recently reported ”New Jeep Gladiators — the truck version of the rugged Wrangler model — can easily fetch $50,000 and are emblematic of a trend toward eye-popping prices that carmakers are commanding for the pickups and sport utility vehicles making up an ever-greater share of their sales. Even as manufacturers and lenders increasingly stretch out auto loan terms to more than seven years and subsidize interest rates with incentives, average monthly payments keep climbing.”