California: Plug-Ins Capture Almost 11% Of The Market In Q1 2021

Tesla increased its sales by 12.5% year-over-year.

By: Mark Kane

Jun 28, 2021 at 3:49pm ET

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In Q1 2021, the overall light-vehicle sales in California amounted to 507,646 units, which is 2.9% less than in 2020. Meanwhile, the share of electric cars in California hit an all-time high.

According to the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA)'s report, some 53,261 plug-ins were sold in the Q1, which is 10.8% of the total market. We don't know exactly how it compared to 2020, as plug-in numbers were not released a year ago.

However, taking into consideration 132,772 units in four quarters of 2020, we guess that the rate of EV growth might be above 100% year-over-year.

All-electric cars stand for 8.1% of the total number, which is a new record, although the gap to hybrids (also at a record high level) increased! Currently, more than one in five new cars in California is at least a hybrid.

Plug-in electric car sales in California - Q1 2021

BEVs: 39,946 (market share of 8.1%)
PHEVs: 13,315 (market share of 2.7%),
Total plug-ins: 53,261 (market share of 10.8%)
HEVs: 48,330 (market share of 9.8%)
Total xEVs: 101,591 (market share of 20.6%)

Four all-electric cars were at the forefront of their subcategories, and two of them were #1:

Tesla Model Y (13,786, up 388%): #1 in Luxury Compact SUV (39.3% share)
Tesla Model 3 (9,731, down 48.4%): #1 in Near Luxury (38.9% share)
Chevrolet Bolt EV (2,839, up 7%): #2 in Subcompact (28.0% share)
Tesla Model S (889, down 43.0%): #4 in Luxury and High End Sports Cars (6.7% share)

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Tesla Model Y - one of the best selling cars

Year-to-date, the Telsa Model Y is among the top passenger cars, even including SUV/pickups. See the list of models above 10,000 YTD:

Toyota RAV4 - 17,266
Toyota Camry - 15,526
Tesla Model Y - 13,786
Toyota Corolla - 13,180
Ford F-Series - 12,978
Honda Civic - 12,942
Toyota Tacoma - 12,515
Ram Pickup - 12,477
Chevrolet Silverado - 12,049
Honda Accord - 10,839
Honda CR-V - 10,339

Tesla brand sales

According to the data, in Q1, Tesla sales amounted to 26,154 (up 12.5%), which is 5.3% of the market (compared to 23,250 and 4.6% a year ago).

Numbers for Tesla Model Y, Model 3 and Model S are shown in the table, which combined with the total, allows us to calculate the Model X result. Unfortunately, we doubt that everything is correct, as the result of 1,745 should allow the X to be in the top five of its category, just like in the previous quarters. Anyway, S/X numbers are probably just delayed registrations of the last cars before the production stopped to prepare the refreshed version.