They finally did it…
If you’ve been noticing a whole lot more Teslas on the roads where you live, you’re definitely not alone. A lot of people are opting for the American luxury electric vehicles, so many in fact that according to Experian car registration data reported by Automotive News, it was the number one luxury brand in America for the first half of 2022. BMW has been fearing this moment for years, as surely other luxury brands have been as well, and now it’s finally here.
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Whatever you might think about Teslas and the people who drive them, this is a huge moment. Instead of it being BMW and Mercedes-Benz battling it out for that top spot in the heart of affluent or at least quasi-affluent Americans, Tesla is now the brand to own if you want to flaunt your financial might.
To pull this amazing feat off in 2022, at least a few quarters before a lot of people were predicting, Tesla saw a monumental shift in sales. Experian says the brand gained 61 percent in vehicle registrations from January through June at almost 229,000 cars, which is a huge leap forward. If the American automaker can maintain that level, it will start to grind down the Germans and a new era of American luxury car dominance will emerge.
For comparison, Experian says for the first half of the year, BMW saw almost 158,000 vehicle registrations, marking a 13 percent drop. So Tesla didn’t just barely edge out BMW, it absolutely shellacked the Bavarians. Before, Tesla was nipping at BMW’s heels, so this is quite the turn of events.
Overall, electric vehicle registrations were up for the first half of 2022. However, models like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Ford Mach-E either were barely around at the start of last year or weren’t on the market at all. So none of that takes away from Tesla’s success, despite a barrage of reports from just about every media outlet under the sun trying to paint the automaker and its CEO Elon Musk in a negative light. If anything, the old adage of any news coverage being good, even if it’s negative, seems to hold true.
Source: Automotive News
Images via Tesla
