by Brett Williams

An update to a new resource is now available on the UCLA Luskin Center EV Initiative's Market Dynamics page. This presentation now includes facts and figures characterizing the U.S. sales of over 80,000 plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) through February 2013.

A couple of notable trends:

* The addition of the Ford Fusion Energi marks the fifth major plug-in-hybrid EV to enter the market (not counting the Fisker Karma, for which sales data is not publically available).

* Plug-in hybrids still hold two-thirds of the cumulative PEV market, but the gap between the monthly sales of five plug-in-hybrid and eight all-battery models has recently been small, in contrast to 2012.

* Sales of the Tesla Model S (which are roughly estimated and not necessarily all U.S. sales) are starting to influence the sales-weighted average characteristics of battery EVs, which have been previously dominated by the LEAF. For example, average battery size, motor power, and electric range have increased.

Background:

Are EV sales really disappointing?  That may be a matter of expectations (more on this later).  But what are the facts so far? Soon there will be over 100,000 plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) on U.S. roads.  And by some measures, PEVs are off to a much better start than gasoline-only hybrids were a decade ago.  U.S. PEVs represent $3 billion in gross revenues (and the Volt alone $1.3 billion).  Learn more from a new Luskin resource, to be updated monthly, characterizing PEV sales from December 2010 to the present.