Dashboard summary November 2016

Another excellent report from Jeff Cobb: November 2016 Dashboard

	Model	11/15/16	10/15/16	09/15/16	08/15/16
1	Prius Liftback	7284	5421	9790	10177
2	Ram Pickup Diesel*	4488	5092	5385	5235
3	RAV4	3757	3551	4127	4919
4	Fusion Hybrid	3372	4915	3776	3002
5	Transit Diesel*	2583	3571	3780	4198
6	Volt	2531	2191	2031	2081
7	Accord Hybrid	1879	1296	1160	890
8	Sonata	1867	1479	1815	1146
9	Fusion Energi	1817	1372	1652	1422
10	Model S*	1800	1200	4100	3200
11	Camry Hybrid	1693	1802	1902	2155
12	Leaf	1457	1412	1316	1066
13	Model X*	1400	1000	2600	1900
14	Prius c	1372	1543	1459	1459
15	Prius v (lowercase v... every month...)	1058	1168	1222	1346
16	Colorado Diesel	886	1056	1031	832
17	C-Max Hybrid	811	398	739	879
18	Prius Plug In	781		4	2
19	Malibu Hybrid	769	600	618	522
20	C-Max Energi	721	571	689	707
21	RX 400 / 450 h	666	535	387	574
22	Avalon Hybrid	639	673	688	775
23	i3*	629	442	391	1013
24	MKZ	552	450	460	541
25	CT200h	550	564	638	819
26	Canyon Diesel	538	434	358	340
27	Highlander Hybrid	483	356	383	506
28	X5	436	406	482	876
29	ES Hybrid	434	353	497	692
30	Optima Hybrid	423	482	591	654
31	A3 Plug In	394	348	312	346
32	F-Pace	366	211
33	Grand Cherokee Diesel	345	357	370	368
34	e-Golf	305	407	529	454
35	500e*	287	319	370	311
36	Sonata Plug In*	275	250	275	250
37	NX Hybrid	241	188	233	224
38	3-Series Plug in	215	92	54	51
39	Range Rover Sport	197	253	290	242
40	Range Rover	186	165	183	202
41	Soul EV	179	190	217	153
42	Cayenne S E-Hybrid	179	138	131	197
43	i8	173	199	158	145
44	XC90 Plug In	161	142	148	176
45	CR-Z	146	168	165	222
46	Q50 Hybrid	134	148	174	150
47	Mirai	105	103	69	371
48	XE	100	59
49	3-Series Diesel	96	23	50	120
50	Panamera S E-Hybrid	88	38	28	59
51	Pathfinder Hybrid	68	64	80	58
52	Focus EV	66	73	82	75
53	QX60 Hybrid	64	59	63	65
54	S550 Plug In	52	174	41	30
55	B-Class Electric	52	58	51	57
56	NSX Hybrid	51	67
57	Promaster Van Diesel	47	45	32	32
58	forTwo EV	47	43	44	55
59	Jetta Hybrid	45	48	76	128
60	Spark	39	260	315	292
61	RLX Hybrid	33	13	24	19
62	Lacrosse Hybrid	31	53	35	60
63	GLE 550e Hybrid	30	19	26	24
64	XV Crosstrek Hybrid	27	44	79	117
65	5-Series Diesel	20	33	38	65
66	7-Series ActiveHybrid	18	22	5
67	X5 Diesel	15	38	80	177
68	Civic Hybrid	15	14	38	50
69	GLE-Class Diesel	14	25	45	67
70	X3 Diesel	9	13	7	32
71	Q70 Hybrid	7	9	8	9
72	GL-Class Diesel	5	14	8	48
73	i	5	4	17	25
74	ELR	5	3	6	6
75	E-Class Diesel	4	9	11	30
76	Insight	3		1	9
77	Cruze Diesel	2	5	7	7
78	LS 600h	2		6	11
79	GS 450h	1		4	3
80	ML Class Diesel	1			1
81	ActiveHybrid 5 (535ih)		1	2
82	Tucson			4	2
83	E400H			2	1
84	Q5 Hybrid			1	2

• Prius Prime - nice first month. Usually peaks after 3-4 months
• Prius hatchback - under a 'stop sales' due to parking brake recall including fixing inventory
• Volt - seems to be picking up
• IONIQ - sales are unchanged and steady

Bob Wilson

 

I got really pissed because auto reporters were making misleading claims by comparing one months data to a year ago and the previous month. Then I noticed Jeff Cobb had everything for one month in his excellent, dashboard web page.

Every month I take Jeff Cobb's data and add it to an excel spreadsheet and share the four month trend. For example, there was a 'stop sales' on the Prius hatchback because of a parking brake problem. Toyota had to get the part, a 'clip', and fix all the cars on the dealer lots before sales could resume which suppressed sales Oct-Nov 2016. For fun, see if you can find anyone else who described the sales dip and the reason why.

Before VW was caught, a lot of automotive reporters were hoping the Jetta TDI would replace the Prius. Except the Jetta and other TDI variants never even came close. But that never stopped them from trying to write a premature Prius eulogy. So let's call this 'fact checking' versus 'fake news.'

Bob Wilson

 

This is the type of irresponsible, boosterism articles that led me to this monthly exercise: US Electric Cars Sales Up 44% In November — 1.1% Of US Car Sales! | CleanTechnica

However, for now, it’s the top 5 players — Tesla Model S, Chevy Volt, Ford Fusion Energi, Tesla Model X, and Nissan LEAF — dominating the market. They accounted for 73% of US electric car sales in November*.

Notably, I think this is also the first time that US electric car sales surpassed 1% of total US car sales — a milestone that may seen small on the surface but is often seen as a tipping point in the evolution of a disruptive technology.​

The rest of the article is based on percentages, another tell when someone is trying to 'gild the lily.' But one look at the graphs solves the problem:


I'm not seeing a sudden, one month jump in the data. Heck, the RAV4 is substantially higher sales than the Volt. It gets worse when you look at the Prius hatchack:

The Prius hatchback sales increased by as much as the total Volt sales.

I'm not a fan of Clean Technica or I would share my concerns with them. If someone else wants to, free free, but it won't be me.

Bob Wilson

 

No problem, neither are the diesels.

Rather it is the title "US Electric Car Sales Up 44%" that is misleading when you look at the last four month, slopes of the plug-in sales. So let's look at the year in review:





My eyes see an upward slope in Jan-Mar but flatlined afterwards. The title of the article suggests more optimism than warranted. I'll try to make a year long trend chart to normalize the scale:



In reality, most of what happened is Tesla began volume production in the first quarter of 2016 ... the largest part of the 44%.

Bob Wilson

 

It was this type of bad industry practice that led me to tracking the Jeff Cobb, Dashboard data. I've seen too many times when picking the right months for a year-to-year comparisons led to misrepresentations.

Bob Wilson

 

No problem from me. I have no problem if folks looking at all the data choose another reality.

Horse; water; drink.

Bob Wilson

 

So I took a look at Jay Cole's: Several Plug-Ins Hit New 2016 Highs, As November EV Sales In US Rise Sharply

	date	value	G-avg
1	01/15	6075	6075
2	02/15	6951	7580
3	03/15	10341	9182
4	04/15	9094	10017
5	05/15	11540	10635
6	06/15	10364	10305
7	07/15	8951	9310
8	08/15	8972	9257
9	09/15	10134	9792
10	10/15	9926	10014
11	11/15	10070	10941
12	12/15	13699	10915
13	01/16	6191	8461
14	02/16	7763	8894
15	03/16	13857	11502
16	04/16	10531	11592
17	05/16	11447	12122
18	06/16	15063	13710
19	07/16	13267	14047
20	08/16	14592	14856
21	09/16	16974	14843
22	10/16	10832	12994
23	11/16	13337	13337

• G-avg (Gaussian average) - .25*prev + .5*cur + .25*next

When plotted:

There is solid growth beyond the first quarter of 2016 although the last quarter, December data is TBD. A spreadsheet shows values above and below 44% depending upon the month. The raw data is noisy which is why I used a Gaussian average.

The Jeff Cobb data is looking only at specific car models and does not do an effective job of tracking the EV/plug-in and diesel subsets. His raw data has a summary but I don't collect it over looking at the outliers and specific vehicles but not a specific subset.

Bob Wilson

 

It does since that data accumulated all of the EVs and plug-ins. There is some suggestion of a flattening late in the 3d quarter. We won't really know until December numbers come in. But that could be the Tesla autopilot changes.

Bob Wilson