Volts, Colts, Bolts, And Dolts -- December 29, 2019

Update

December 30, 2019: Tesla tumbles almost 5% -- but then again, the whole market is off today. Profit taking. From Bloomberg:

Tesla Inc. tumbled 4.9% Monday, its biggest drop in a month, after analysts at Cowen said vehicle deliveries may miss the company’s target this year as Model 3 demand slumps.

“Excluding the Netherlands and China, we expect Model 3 deliveries to be down” compared to the prior quarter and year-ago period, analyst Jeffrey Osborne wrote in a note dated Dec. 29. His estimate “highlights the demand saturation we are seeing across most mature markets as we shift from pent-up demand to steady flow demand.”

Tesla may deliver some 356,000 vehicles for this year, slightly below the company’s October target range of 360,000 to 400,000, he said.

At the same time, Cowen raised its fourth-quarter delivery estimate to 101,000 from 95,000 to reflect better expectations for the Netherlands and China. Osborne sees Tesla falling short of its Model S/X expectations, while his Model 3 forecast is roughly in line with consensus estimates.

From one analyst at the linked Bloomberg story:

“While Tesla has built a very dedicated fan base that has been willing to excuse poor build quality, customer service, and service infrastructure, we continue to be skeptical around broader adoption,” Osborne said. He rates the shares underperform with a price target of $210, implying a 51% decrease. Of the analysts tracked by Bloomberg, 15 analysts rate the shares the equivalent of a sell, while 11 rate it buy and 10 hold, with an average price target of $297.

Original Post 

I find the EV story fascinating. Can you think of any other sector that won't report its monthly, quarterly, yearly sales? BMW is now reporting EV sales only as a percentage decrease YoY. Say what?

From the best EV sales data site out there:

We'll be reporting 2019 Q4 EV Sales beginning Thursday, January 2 and/or Friday, January 3, and continuing throughout the following week. However, it's important to note that there will still be some missing data since many automakers refuse to report EV sales.

One wonders if this internet site can stay in business when the data is unavailable, unreliable, unverifiable.

Just after I wrote that, I read this at the site:

Important considerations going forward: At this point, it appears we won't have a reliable method for reporting monthly sales figures for many models.

While many are not models that make a huge impact on our monthly sales chart, but may in the future (i.e. Hyundai, Kia, Porsche, Subaru, Volvo), some do, like GM and Ford.

We're also learning that other sites are now estimating numbers from these automakers without exposing that and/or not sharing them at all.

With that said, we are moving to quarterly reporting as a whole. However, we'll still publish several articles each month showcasing data gleaned from automakers that do choose to report.

So, we'll have a number of articles about deliveries of each "chart-topping" EV.

While we really hate to move forward this way and have incompleted charts going forward, we have no choice at this point. Sadly, our chart has become almost purely based on estimated date (which was once supported by gleaned data, but would now be just based on pure guesses).

Now, more from the site:

Note that BMW has decided for some time to no longer give model breakdowns or a final EV number, but rather a percentage decrease YoY, which has been huge in the last few months. But now, the automaker isn't even sharing its EV sales numbers/percentage at all. Still, i3 and i8 numbers will be official as reported by BMW.

While Mercedes is willing to provide IEV with a "total" number of plug-in vehicles sold for the month, the totals for each model are unverified by the automaker.

Many other automakers like Hyundai, Kia, Subaru, Volvo, Porsche, and Jaguar don't reveal any EV sales figures.

Tesla reports its overall global deliveries every quarter, but that doesn't help with U.S. sales.

GM (Chevrolet and Cadillac) and Ford, among others, have chosen to just report on a quarterly basis, but again, there's often no breakdown of EV models delivered.

Toyota stopped reporting Prius Prime sales and has instead made the decision to just post overall Prius sales. Honda has never broken down Clarity sales either.

So, basically, we have a few EV sales numbers to add from the past few months and will have a few more after the end of the quarter. Aside from that, "You get nothing, you lose, good day, sir!"

I don't how to interpret this as anything but really, really bad news for the EV industry right now.

But to reiterate. Look at the note about BMW:

Note that BMW has decided for some time to no longer give model breakdowns or a final EV number, but rather a percentage decrease YoY, which has been huge in the last few months. But now, the automaker isn't even sharing its EV sales numbers/percentage at all. Still, i3 and i8 numbers will be official as reported by BMW. 

EVs remain a luxury segment (except for Volts, Colts, Bolts, Dolts, or whatever they are now called).

By the way, has anyone even seen any television advertising for any of these EVs? Search ev television commercials over at YouTube -- speaks volumes.

It will be interesting to see how publicly traded auto manufacturers will report their EV numbers.

• India: 
• bad news, May 1, 2019; 
• FY2019: 3,600 passenger sedans 
• China:
• really bad news, Quartz, September 11, 2019
• China's EV sales are now declining by double digits
• Europe:
• this is the headline: industry analysts expect EV sales to soar in the UK and EU beginning in 2020
• mostly due to mandates, tax breaks
• already expensive, prices appear to be increasing