Tesla’s Prius Moment Is Over

Tesla’s share of the new electric vehicle market was below 50% for the second consecutive quarter in Q3, the U.S. Energy Information Administration confirmed last week in a new report on U.S. electrified vehicle sales. Tesla has enjoyed an impressively long honeymoon period as America’s de facto EV brand, but 2024 may mark the end of that streak. Even if the controversial EV maker manages to squeeze enough sales to sneak back up above 50% by the end of December, Tesla is going to have to settle for ceding market share for the foreseeable future. It’s been a good run, but it’s starting to look like Tesla’s Prius moment is over.

Tesla’s market share first dipped below 50% in Q2 of this year, and while Kelley Blue Book’s October EV Sales Report (referenced in the chart below) suggested that Q3 was a rebound sales quarter, the company’s volume remains down 4.5% for the full year so far. In the meantime, virtually every other volume EV portfolio in the U.S. is up. Notable exceptions include Chevrolet (which is missing the 2023 volume it enjoyed from Bolt EV/EUV sales), Volvo, and Volkswagen. Even Rivian sales have risen nearly 18% so far in 2024.

With new competitors arriving on what seems like a monthly basis, Tesla’s influence over the segment becomes more diluted. It can still place enormous price pressure on mainstream automakers who are way behind in terms of EV investment and sunk costs, but Tesla’s other early advantage, its once-proprietary Supercharger network, has essentially evaporated in a regulatory climate that has (so far) heavily favored public EV infrastructure. Tesla would never have allowed other EVs at its stations if the decision didn’t benefit the company, of course, but the net result is still detrimental to the brand’s market share.

Perhaps Tesla’s best hope for an increase in footprint lies in (ironically) the smallest model it has pitched yet, which analysts have nicknamed “Model Q.” A cheaper Tesla would do wonders for market share, certainly, but that would mean exchanging unit profitability for a bigger slice of the pie. More market share always looks good on paper, but if it comes at the expense of profitability, is it worthwhile? Besides, Elon Musk has already gone on record saying that “a regular $25K model [would be] pointless,” while hyping the Cybercab.

With 48.8% of the market in its pocket, Tesla is still the elephant in the American EV manufacturing room—Ford holds the next-highest share with a whopping 6.8%—but as you can see from the chart above, that figure is down significantly from just five years ago, when Tesla still accounted for 80% of U.S. EV sales.

What does all of this have to do with the Toyota Prius? If you have to ask, I’m going to assume you were either too young or not yet alive for the media dogpile that followed the hybrid’s debut. It was the hybrid car—it even guest starred in The West Wing—and it effectively held that distinction until the end of 2005. Back then, a Prius story needed several paragraphs on just what the heck a hybrid even was before you could get into why it sucked at being a car. And hey, it kinda did.

You know what else kinda sucked at being a car? Early Teslas.

Think about it: Both were initially dismissed far and wide for being cheaply appointed, overpriced, overweight, and underperforming virtue-signaling icons for environmentalists. Countless forum dwellers stood against them, confidently asserting that they’d be junkyard hulks by 100,000 miles thanks to their heavy, expensive, doomed-to-fail battery packs. Many of those brave, misguided soldiers were buried where they fell.

While it took nearly a decade for the Prius to fall below 50% market share for good, 2006 still marked a critical inflection point for the groundbreaking hybrid. It remained the best-selling hybrid, but being #1 is not the same as being the one.

Judging from what we’ve seen so far in 2024, Tesla is no longer the one.

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