GM’s EV Sales Are Booming

• General Motors Q3 EV sales are up 46 percent from Q2, to 32,095.
• The Chevrolet Equinox EV is now GM’s best-selling electric vehicle. 
• Cadillac has sold over 20,000 Lyriq EV crossovers so far this year. 

Consumers aren’t warming up to electric vehicles like automakers thought they would. Some brands, like Mercedes-Benz, are watching their EV sales tumble. But it’s not all gloomy news on the EV front. GM’s third-quarter sales report shows that EVs are far from dead as it continues to expand its lineup of battery-electric vehicles.

GM sold 32,095 EVs between July and September this year, which is the automaker’s best quarter ever for these models. Sales were up 40 percent compared to Q2, when it delivered 21,930 EVs by comparison. GM only sold 16,425 EVs in Q1. Its share of the US EV market has also grown from 6.5 percent in Q1 to 9.5 percent in Q3.

A lot of this quarter’s success comes from the new Equinox EV. It’s now the automaker’s best-selling EV, making up nearly a third of GM’s Q3 EV sales—9,772—its first full quarter on sale. With sales up 21 percent from Q2, the Blazer EV was a close second at 7,998.

The Bolt EV, which ended production last year, accounted for just 168 sales last quarter, but Chevrolet is preparing to launch a similarly priced successor soon. Silverado EV sales were down from Q2 to Q3—2,196 to 1,995—but the automaker will launch a cheaper Silverado EV trim before the end of the year that should broaden its appeal and pump up those numbers.

GMC began to deliver the Sierra Denali EV Edition 1 last quarter, while the beastly Hummer enjoyed a 268.9 percent increase in 2024 Q3 sales compared to last year. The quarter accounted for nearly half of the EV’s total sales for the year. They’re up 632.1 percent, but that’s a big number because GMC only sold 1,216 SUVs and trucks from January to September 2023. The Hummer EV well on its way to cracking the 10,000 mark this year, though. 

At Cadillac, the brand GM designated to lead its EV strategy, Lyriq sales are compared to 2023 even if they’re holding steady for the year. The Lyriq ended Q1 with 5,800 sales, followed by 7,294 in Q2. Q3 was slightly worse at 7,224. Those numbers won’t put the Lyriq on any year-end best-seller lists, but it is outselling other luxury EVs from BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Lexus, with over 20,000 sales so far this year. 

Cadillac will have two more EVs to offer customers by the end of the year—the Optiq and Escalade IQ. The Cadillac Vistiq joins the lineup next year, expanding the range of models available to consumers.

Wanning interest has forced some automakers to rejigger their EV roadmaps, delaying models while pushing back deadlines to fully convert to building battery-electric vehicles, which is also leading to some cheap lease deals from automakers that over-measured demand and are eager to move stagnating inventory.