Say what you will about the Tesla Cybertruck and the people who drive it, but folks who want an electric pickup truck are choosing it over the competition at an astonishing rate. Granted, it’s a very small sliver of the overall car market, but back in July Cybertruck sales pretty much equaled the sales of every other electric pickup truck combined.
According to new data from S&P Global, 5,175 Cybertrucks were delivered in July. Just at face value, that’s a really strong number, but things get even wilder when you look at EV truck deliveries as a whole. Apparently, all other electric trucks combined for just 5,175 deliveries in July, Automotive News reports. It is an astonishing relative domination for Elon Musk’s latest creation. The Cybertruck nearly outsold the Rivian R1T, Ford F-150 Lightning, Chevy Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV and GMC Hummer EV Pickup combined during the summer month.
In total, EV registrations in July rose to 118,273 vehicles – up from 100,620 a year earlier. Battery-powered vehicles’ share of the U.S. light vehicle market rose to 8.5 percent, up 0.9 percent from a year ago. Not too shabby all around, but S&P asserts that a lot of that improvement is due to really strong financial incentives. Hey, whatever works.
The rest of the news is a bit of a mixed bag for Tesla. The automaker commanded a 48 percent share of those vehicle deliveries, however, it was down a bit from the 56 percent share it had the same time last year. Still, 48 percent is a wild number.
That being said, Tesla is showing some signs of weakness, according to AutoNews. The Model 3 saw a 31 percent fall in July registrations as compared with a year earlier. That’s some tough news when you consider the car was just refreshed, but it does make sense. The cheapest Model 3 lost access to the federal EV tax credit at the beginning of this year because of tighter battery sourcing requirements.
In a lot of ways, other brands are starting to catch up with Tesla… sort of. Non-Tesla EV registrations rose 38 percent compared to the same time last year. Here’s how that broke down, according to AutoNews:
Hyundai Motor Group had 10,846 registrations among its Hyundai, Kia and Genesis brands, good for second place, the data showed. General Motors, in third, had 9,767 registrations for Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Brightdrop. Ford Motor Co. had 9,504, good for fourth, S&P Global Mobility said.
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Registrations for the Rivian R1S crossover, the startup’s top-selling consumer vehicle, fell 18 percent in July compared with the year-earlier month to 1,545 vehicles. Kia’s EV9, also a three-row electric crossover, had 1,960 registrations in July, overtaking the Rivian R1S. The EV9 went on sale in December.
Combined registrations for Rivian’s R1S and R1T pickup, its two consumer models, were down 0.3 percent in July to 2,522. Rivian shut down its Normal, Ill., factory in April to retool for freshened R1 vehicles. Rivian, including its commercial vans, fell to seventh place among EV brands in July from fourth place in June, the registration data showed.
Sure, other automakers are making some fairly significant gains on Tesla when it comes to electric vehicles.