By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The biggest automakers have now reported vehicle sales for Q4 and the full year 2024, and we’re going to look at their annual sales back to 2013. Hyundai-Kia set a new record and moved into fourth place, behind GM, Toyota, and Ford. Stellantis spiraled down into a catastrophe, with Nissan not far behind. Tesla, which had leapt from record to record, hit a wall in 2024. And GM, Toyota, and Ford, though their sales rose, are way down from their highs in 2015 – Ford by 20%!
Total new-vehicle sales rose by about 2.3% in 2024 to about 15.8 million vehicles, using some estimates to fill in for the still missing smaller pieces. EV sales rose 10% to a record 1.3 million vehicles, despite Tesla’s decline. ICE vehicle sales ticked up less than 2%.
Overall vehicle sales are still below where they had first been in 1986, nearly four decades ago. The two best years were 2000 and 2016, with 17.4 million and 17.5 million vehicles sold. In 2024, sales were about 9% below 2000. Over the same period, the US population has increased by 20%! So this an ugly chart:
Prices are too high.
Automakers have forever gone upscale to ever fancier models, and raising prices on top of that, to where volume hit a ceiling and started to stagnate, interrupted by plunges and bankruptcies. So now they have huge profit margins but low sales volumes – except for two of the bigger ones: Tesla and Hyundai-Kia. They have made hay in this climate.
The average retail transaction price including all incentives and discounts in December was roughly unchanged from a year ago, at $46,200, according to JD Power estimates. During the pandemic, it had spiked by 36%, from $34,900 in December 2019 to an absurd $47,300 in December 2022. And those prices are a massive problem in terms of sales volume – they’re just too high.
The biggest automakers in the US.
General Motors, #1: Sales of all its brands in the US in 2024 rose 4.3% to 2.71 million vehicles. But this was down by 12% from its recent peak in 2015.
- EV sales: +50.8% to a record 114,400 vehicles, even though it killed its popular Bolt and Bolt EUV in 2023 (62,000 units sold in 2023). But GM came out with a slew of new models in 2023 and 2024.
- ICE vehicle sales: +2.9% to 2.59 million vehicles.
- EV share of GM’s total sales rose to 4.2%, from 2.9% a year earlier.
By comparison, across the industry, including Tesla and the other dedicated EV makers, the share of EVs has risen to 9% of industrywide new-vehicle sales.
Toyota, #2: Sales of Toyota and Lexus brands combined in the US rose 3.7% in 2023, to 2.33 million vehicles. This was down by 7% from its recent peak in 2015.
Toyota just started selling EVs. After having poohpoohed EVs for many years, it changed course two years ago, relegated its anti-EV CEO Akio Toyoda to being Chairman, and replaced him with a new CEO, Lexus boss Koji Sato, under whom Toyota has commenced a huge development program for EVs. So eventually. But it’s way behind.
Ford, #3: Sales by Ford and Lincoln brands combined rose 4.2% in 2023 to 2.08 million vehicles. From the recent peak in 2015, sales were down 20%!
- EV sales: +34.9% to 97,865 vehicles in 2024.
- ICE vehicle sales: +3.0% to 1.98 million vehicles.
- EV share of Ford’s total sales rose to 4.7%, from 3.6% a year earlier.
Hyundai-Kia, #4. Combined sales rose by 3.1% in 2024, to a record 1.63 million vehicles.
Hyundai is the parent company of Kia, with Hyundai holding a 33.9% stake in Kia, and Kia holding stakes in Hyundai subsidiaries, and they share vehicle platforms. For our purposes here, the duo as one automaker with different brands.
- EV sales: +53% to 101,131 vehicles, not including Hyundai’s Kona EV and Kia’s Niro EV which they don’t split out from their ICE sister models.
- ICE vehicle sales: +1%.
- EVs now account for 7% of their total sales.
Honda, #5: Sales rose by 8.8% in 2024 to 1.42 million vehicles, down by 13% from its 2017 peak. Stellantis’ collapse made room for Honda to move into the #5 slot for the first time.
Honda, like Toyota, dropped the ball on EVs, but is now belatedly trying to catch up.
Stellantis #6: This is just painful to watch. FCA US sales dropped another 15% in 2024, to 1.30 million vehicles. From the recent peak in 2015, sales have collapsed by 42%. The US brands of FCA have no EVs.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares was forced to resign “effective immediately” on Sunday, December 1, amid enormous frustration by US dealers with his leadership. Its shares [STLA] have collapsed by 57% since March 2024.
This is a catastrophic chart of an existential crisis:
Nissan #7: Sales of Nissan and Infiniti combined ticked up 2.3% in 2024 to 924,008 vehicles. From the recent peak in 2017, sales are down by 42%.
This is another existential crisis in the making, not far behind Stellantis.
Honda is now in discussions with Nissan over a merger, or rather a takeover of Nissan. But this is going to be a complicated deal, if it even takes place. Many of their models are competing directly with each other, and antitrust regulators should take a close look at that. But if that deal happens, based on 2024 sales, and if Honda doesn’t shut down some Nissan models, it would make that combination the #2 automaker in the US, ahead of Toyota. The last thing the US auto market needs is less competition. It needs lower prices, not higher prices.
So another very ugly chart:
Tesla doesn’t disclose US sales. It only discloses global sales. Tesla’s global sales in 2024 dipped by 1.1% from the record in the prior year. But there’s the registrations data in the US through Q3 (the Model Y was the #2 Model in the US), and there are estimates for the remainder of 2024. Cox Automotive estimated on a preliminary basis that Tesla’s US sales fell to 633,000 in 2024.
This dip in sales – even as EV sales at the legacy automakers have soared amid strong demand for EVs – is a sign that there are some serious issues at Tesla that are allowing other EV makers to eat its share in big gulps.
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The post Ugly Charts of US Auto Sales, 2024: Stellantis Spirals into Catastrophe, GM, Toyota, Ford, Honda Rise but far Below Peaks. Hyundai-Kia Sets Record. EV Sales +10% despite Tesla’s Dip appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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