Maybe you've owned a Tesla for many years. Maybe it was your first electric vehicle, and now you're ready to see what else is out there. Maybe new options have enticed you with better prices, more range and different features. Or maybe the antics of a certain CEO who is basically inextricable from Tesla at this point have you turned off. If so, you aren't alone.
While it's still the EV leader in the U.S. and, for the most part, globally (depending on how BYD is doing that quarter) Tesla is losing its market share in this country. In some ways, it's an inevitable outcome. Tesla helped pioneer the field, but now there are scores of other great EV options out there that meet or exceed the capabilities of cars like the Model 3 and Model Y.
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Tesla's sliding market share
In the second quarter of 2024, Tesla's U.S. EV share fell below 50% for the first time. It's still the biggest EV leader in America, but its aging lineup of cars as CEO Elon Musk focuses on robotaxis and AI has buyers looking increasingly elsewhere.
So where are those owners going after they leave Tesla? It's complicated.
The folks at Edmunds recently tallied up data around Tesla trade-ins, and the headline has gotten a lot of attention: "More than half of Teslas are being traded in for gas cars." And while that is true, there are some caveats.
First of all, that data is counted from traditional dealerships, so it doesn't include trade-ins for other, newer Teslas or other direct-sale startups like Rivian, Lucid and Polestar (and neither does the model-specific trade-in data below.) Second, it's important to note that while half of all dealership trade-ins put people back in gas-powered cars, that number is actually down significantly; in 2019, it was as high as 71% of Tesla owners trading in for gas-powered cars at dealerships.
"Basically, if you were trading in your Tesla in 2019, you were doing it to get the heck out of an EV and back into a car that only needed gas," Edmunds said. But that's hardly the case anymore.
Gallery: 2024 Cadillac Lyriq
What does that tell us? For one—again—the horror stories about owners dumping EVs after one go are overstating things quite a bit. Most studies we've seen indicate EV owners tend to stay with EVs in their garage long-term, even if they may add a second or third gas or hybrid car to the mix. And second, it shows that the growth in other EV options and publicly available chargers are keeping people in the electric ecosystem long-term.
And the cars they're trading in for are especially interesting right now. According to the chart below, the leaders include the Ford F-150 Lightning, the Cadillac Lyriq and the Kia EV9, in that order. That's followed by the venerable Chevy Silverado 1500 (guess the Cybertruck isn't for everyone, huh) and BMW i4:
You basically have several Tesla-like cars; two more traditional trucks, one of them electric; and the EV9, probably for families that have outgrown Tesla's smaller cars.
So while EVs do not make up the majority of the trade-ins, EV nameplates are still the most popular single models for former Tesla owners. And there's no one gas model stealing people away from their Teslas. The most popular gas cars on the list are the Chevy Silverado, Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra, all traditional trucks that suggest either a lifestyle change or a priority shift from anything Tesla offers.
Again, this data is from dealership trade-ins this year, and it does not count sales of Rivians, Lucids, or Polestars. (Or, God help them, anyone who ended up in a Fisker.) And the numbers don't indicate the number of hybrids people are trading in for too: "Hybrids variants are not broken out separately in our data for models like the F-150, CR-V and Tundra, so likely some other strong hybrid purchases here as well," an Edmunds spokesperson told InsideEVs.
And it also doesn't count the number of people staying with Tesla itself, which is still quite high. "Tesla still maintains an 87% brand retention rate, outperforming two non-electric automakers at 67% with Lexus and 54% at Toyota," Bloomberg Intelligence noted in April. Furthermore, "81% of prospective Tesla buyers are new customers switching from competing EV brands compared to 42% of Nissan’s prospective buyers."
In other words, don't count Tesla out yet. But it could really use some new models in the mix these days.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
