Kia continues to achieve year-on-year sales growth with electric vehicle sales rising by 83%
If you follow the mainstream media’s coverage of electric vehicle sales in the US, there has been a lot of negativity lately. Reuters “More alarm bells are ringing about slowing electric vehicle demand” just last week, he announced. This week a Baron “Electric vehicles were supposed to be the solution. Now they’re the problem… (as) investors reel, wondering if there’s a problem with the growth of the revolutionary technology embraced by automakers around the world,” the headline reads. These are just two examples of recent negative stories, but if you read beyond the headlines, you may realize that the headlines do not necessarily align with the following analysis (suggesting that if one only pays attention to the headlines, they may miss what is really going on). For example, the Reuters article reveals more subtleties, some of which contradict the headline that grabs the reader’s attention: “Electric Car Sales Still growing strongBut this demand is not in line with the expectations of automakers and other companies that have invested billions of dollars in electric vehicles. Expectations of continued high interest rates have led companies to change their plans as they look to 2024 cautiously. These three sentences briefly depict the entire situation; Electric car sales are no Slowing down, across the board (so we can say that demand is not slowing down across the board either), they are still growing and in Kia’s case, they are growing significantly, year on year. However, it is Expectations Automakers and other companies (i.e. those that invest in the industry or those that supply components e.g Batteries from Panasonic) that were not met, and here lies the real problem: people’s expectations. What do people expect from electric car sales? Anything less than Accelerated Growth, according to a recent article in Clean Technica. But this was always an unrealistic expectation.
I’ll save for later an analysis of whether 2023 EV sales have essentially maintained an exponential trajectory, compared to past years, and perhaps consider the outlook for 2024 as well. I want to get back to focusing on Kia sales, for electric vehicles in particular, because it shows us some of the subtleties that we will need to take into account in the context of electric vehicle sales in general. Kia announced this week that its sales EV6 by 30%, year-on-year, and the full range of electric vehicle models (which as of the end of October represents only one other model, which is… Nero EV) by 83% on an annual basis. This seems like a very healthy, if not exactly exponential, growth curve for one of the most popular electrical box manufacturers. Furthermore, sometime this month, or next, we should see the third model of Kia’s electric car start being delivered to customers in the US, which is something that is eagerly awaited. EV9. Thus, it is very likely that Kia will end the year with its strongest US electric vehicle sales numbers ever, with an increase of about 100% compared to 2022 sales. How many electric vehicle sales might Kia be able to achieve in the US by the end of 2023? If last year’s number Somewhere around 30,000 EVs (I am no (Including plug-in hybrids in that number) Accurate, Kia ends up increasing EV sales by 80-100% this year, then Kia will see between 54,000 and 60,000 total EV sales in the US this year. But I don’t think that’s what Kia is actually saying, and I’m not willing to be that optimistic. Since it’s very difficult to know exactly how many electric cars Kia has sold (they don’t outperform car sales) Nero EV Specifically, with its hybrid variants), the best I can do is a bit of sophisticated guesswork from the information Kia shares. We know that the EV6 has sold 16,340 units so far this year (2,410 less Compared to the first 10 months of last year), remember that the 30% year-over-year increase compares October 2022 sales to October 2023 sales, not cumulative year-to-date totals. We also know that Kia sold 31,493 Niro in the U.S. this year compared to 21,877 last year (a healthy increase of about 44%), but we don’t know how many of those Niro sales were EV models. I previously estimated that the Niro EV makes up about 33% of total Niro sales Forbes Conveniently I put the total number of Kia Niro EVs sold in California through September (California is the leading state in EV sales by a large margin) at 3,395 units, which if my 33% estimate is accurate, that means about one in every three Niro EVs sold In the United States, it is sold in California. Frankly, this math seems reasonably accurate by this somewhat arbitrary measure given that California accounts for about 37% of EV registrations in the entire country, according to US Department of Energy. Thus it may be reasonably safe to say that this year Kia has sold about 11,000 Niro EVs in the US through the end of October. Combine those with EV6 sales and we’ll likely sell more than 27,000 EVs with two months to go. I think Kia will end up selling between 30,000 and 32,000 EVs in the US this year, or between 2% and 6% more EVs for calendar year 2023 compared to 2022. Certainly not massive growth, but growth nonetheless. .
Kia is not alone either. Sales of Hyundai’s electric vehicles are also up, Tesla had already surpassed its entire 2022 sales numbers by the end of September, and is sticking to its estimates of total sales of 1.8 million vehicles for 2023. In fact, Ford’s electric vehicle sales rose by 12.6%. Until October, according to electrical. Chevrolet electric vehicle sales also increased by 8% year over year according to InsideEVs. Combined, these five brands account for the vast majority of all electric vehicle sales in the United States today. And since each of them shows positive growth in electric car sales, that’s why we can safely say so Expectations That’s the real problem, not actual EV sales. The outlook is deteriorating because not as many electric cars are being sold as some people expect, so we might end up with a question: Why are sales slowing down a bit?? The first reason is perhaps the most obvious: prices. High interest rates, combined with dealers adding big profit margins and the typically higher starting price for primarily EVs, are doing more to cool EV sales than anything else. Why say this when you love ports Forbes Put this in the bottom of your top five? Because while product familiarity, range anxiety, the charging network, and tougher sales funnels now that early adopters have their electric cars all impact sales as well, none of those things were really different late last year and into the beginning of this. year, when the public mood was more optimistic, but electric vehicle sales were growing rapidly at that time. No, the main reason electric vehicle sales are growing, but not as quickly as investors and manufacturers might like, is the cost of buying one now. Therefore, the simple solution to selling more electric cars and maintaining a healthy growth rate is to keep prices low (which is certainly easier said than done).
do you agree? Please leave your thoughts and questions below.
Photos courtesy of Kia.
Justin Hart She has owned and driven electric vehicles for over 15 years, including a first-generation Nissan Leaf, a second-generation Chevy Volt, a Tesla Model 3, an electric bike, and most recently a Kia Sorento PHEV. He is also an avid SUP rider, poet, photographer, and wine lover. He enjoys taking long EV and PHEV road trips to beautiful, quiet places with the people he loves. Follow Justin on Kia torque news or X For regular electric and hybrid news coverage.
