Nissan Leaf Dominates In January 2014 Electric Car Sales (Charts)

Electric car sales numbers are in for the US! I’ve created a few charts below to share the big picture for January 2014 versus January 2013. However, I’m changing one huge thing this year with these monthly electric car sales updates — I’m dropping the conventional hybrids. Frankly, I just don’t care about them, since they don’t have any of the benefits of 100% electric and even plug-in hybrid electric cars. Hopefully you also don’t care about them and these updates will be more useful to you as a result.

January 2014 didn’t see spectacular growth over January 2013, but it still saw growth. 100% electric cars saw about 19% more sales in 2014 while plug-in hybrid electric cars saw about 25% more sales.

The net effect was about 22% electrified car sales growth — 5590 sales versus 4577 sales. Of course, that is building on a January 2013 versus January 2012 sales increase of about 248% (211% growth for 100% electrics and 290% growth for plug-in electrics). January 2014 electrified car sales are up about 325%.

But, anyway, on to the specific models:

As you can see, the Nissan Leaf has taken over the #1 spot, starting 2014 with a solid lead over its “arch rival” in EV sales — the Chevy Volt. The Tesla Model S might come in at #2, but since Tesla doesn’t release monthly sales figures, that 1,000 sales figure is just a rough estimate — one which I will update (though, not precisely) when 1st quarter sales figures come out in May.

Toyota’s Prius Plug-in continues to sell fairly well, surely eating into Chevy Volt sales a bit, which were at 1,140 in January 2013.

And Ford’s two PHEVs also continue to do well. I generally like to think of them as one model, since they are both offered by Ford and are both PHEVs. If you counted their sales together, Ford’s 1,024 Energi sales actually would have come in #2 in January. Aside from Honda and Daimler (which shouldn’t count), Ford also had the strongest sales growth in January 2014 compared to January 2013.

Similarly, if you look at electrified vehicle sales by brand, this is how the top 3 stack up:

Honda, Mitsubishi, Fiat, and Daimler sales are hardly worth noting. However, Mitsubishi i sales might pick up a lot once it’s big $6,130 price drop kicks in.

Aside from the Leaf’s solid rise to the top, not too much has changed this month. Ford’s continued EV sales growth and GM’s sales dip would be the other most interesting stories, in my humble opinion.

January EV Sales

3 thoughts on “Nissan Leaf Dominates In January 2014 Electric Car Sales (Charts)

    1. there are assumptions/guesses that come in here. i’d have to see where their model sales differ. Model S sales are an estimate (since they aren’t reported) and Fiat 500e sales are not included (since they aren’t reported) in mine. I’m sure EDTA also doesn’t have exact numbers on those. As for PHEV, I have no idea how we would be 20 units off from each other.

      1. Ah, found it. They are using HybridCars.com’s totals. That site estimates much higher Tesla Model S sales (1300 instead of 1000), which I think is an overestimate since Tesla’s production is limited right now and it is shipping cars to Europe. It’s sales will pick up next quarter once it has the battery supply issue fixed.

        I see they also put in an estimate of 35 Fiat 500e sales. Not sure how they are coming up with that, but I don’t feel comfortable enough with public info about that car’s sales to throw an estimate in there. At least Tesla has its quarterly reports to go off of.

        And as for the PHEV/EREV total, we have the same numbers for all of the specific models, so someone must have an addition problem somewhere. (Don’t think it’s me.)

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