From Reuters:
Tesla Inc's overall vehicle registrations nearly halved in the U.S. state of California during the fourth quarter.
The massive drop comes as tax credit for Tesla buyers ended in 2019. It had fallen to $3,750 at the start of the year and had halved to $1,875 in July.
An existing $7,500 U.S. tax credit for electric vehicles, which allows taxpayers to deduct a part of the cost of buying an electric car, phases out over 15 months once an automaker hits 200,000 cumulative EV sales, which Tesla hit in July 2018.
The report released on Wednesday showed registrations in California, a bellwether market for the electric-car maker, plummeted 46.5% to 13,584 in the quarter ended December 2019, from 25,402 in the same period a year earlier.
Model 3 registrations, which accounted for about three-fourth of the total, halved to 10,694.
Later, from The Wall Street Journal:
Subaru Corp.’s chief executive said he didn’t see much evidence Americans want electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids and expressed frustration at navigating between environmental regulations and consumer demand.
“The only EVs that are selling well are from Tesla,” said Subaru’s Tomomi Nakamura at a briefing for journalists. [He must have missed the memo -- see story above.]
Tokyo-based Subaru relies on the U.S. for two-thirds of its global sales, and has already had a tough experience trying to sell a vehicle that can be charged at home.
In 2018, it introduced a plug-in hybrid version of the Crosstrek. It said just 300 units of the model were selling each month on average. In this area, Mr. Nakamura said, “We think the U.S. market is really difficult.”
Later, more of the same from Bloomberg:
Tesla is the only car company looking likely to benefit in the coming years.
Look at every other corner of the U.S. auto industry -- the world’s most valuable automaker, dealers, consumer surveys and market forecasts -- and a more ominous picture emerges.
A top American executive for Toyota Motor Corp., whose market value is still more than double Tesla’s even after Elon Musk’s epic run, recently warned of electric-car catastrophe. Auto retailers caution growth will be slow, citing still-high battery costs and range constraints. And far more U.S. shoppers are willing to kick the tires on a hybrid than cars that only plug in.
Once the word gets out that these are tethered vehicles, their appeal will fly out the window.The cause for concern remains as EVs start to appear in showrooms in greater numbers. The models on the market will swell almost sevenfold to 121 models in the next half decade, from 18 now, according to LMC Automotive. But the researcher sees all those vehicles claiming just 5.5% of U.S. sales in 2025.
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80% Of Americans Have A Brokerage Account
Really? If that's accurate, I find that amazing. From Yahoo!Finance:
The new report says 21% of Americans don’t have a brokerage account or any other way to invest other than their company 401K or pension plan. But for those who are investing there is a definite difference in the habits of baby boomers and millennials.If I'm reading that correctly, if 21% of Americans don't have a brokerage account .... that must mean 79% do?
