Electric Car Sales In Q3 Went Insane! My Q4 USA Sales Predictions
All right, this is starting to get a little bit silly. So, this tax credit thing seems to be like a booster shot instead of a big letdown now that we’re into the apocalyptic phase of no tax credit is not as much of a hellscape as everyone was making it out to be. In fact, quite the opposite. Let’s go ahead and get into it. [Music] Many bits of good news have been filtering in after the tax credit was removed and one of which was the numbers for Q3 sales. The outstanding number in my opinion is the fact that the Cadillac brand has reached 40% pure EVs in Q3 2025. Who would have thought? And the thing about this is that it’s speculated brands that are luxury brands are going to be insulated from the loss of the tax credit with the decrease EV sales because their cars by and large weren’t qualifying for EV sale EV tax credits anyway. So no harm no foul and it was just going to continue. Now I do think that um Cadillac is going to dip off their uh precipice 40%. And um Jim Farley from the CEO of Ford was speculating somewhere around 5% pure EV sales for Q4 2025. And that was basically my prediction. Also, we would come down from the high 9% down to about five for Q4 and then we’ start to ramp back up from there in a quasi uh Germany loss of subsidy uh repeat event. But that doesn’t seem to be what is actually panning out in reality. So I’ll get to the other brands in a second. Let’s just stick with the uh Cadillac brand. I personally think what’s going to happen with them is they are not going to go to 5%. I think what they’re going to do is they’re going to go from like 40% down to like 30%. And um you know there’s a lot of hype in the um news cycles now. So a lot of people were buying EVs that weren’t before in the uh overall sales funnel. There were more people being attracted. So I do think that is going to come down somewhat, but it’s not going to 5%. I think Cadillac is going to remain a respectable level over 25% pure EV sale and likely when the tally is done it was supposed to be one out of every three Cadillacs in 2025 was going to be a pure EV and now I think it’s going to be closer to I don’t know um not quite half and uh not a third but somewhere in between. So, I’m not quite sure what that number is, but let’s just say 35% 38% something like that of all the Cadillacs sold in 2025 are going to be pure battery electric. That alone is a um titanic or a seismatic shift in the American auto industry. that is a tectonic um altering of the landscape that a brand that is got such legacy as Cadillac is now approaching one out of every two cars that they sell being full battery electric and that alone is really saying something. But let’s get to some of the other bits of news that has come out. Let’s stick with General Motors here for just a second. Um this is their investor relations slide deck for Q3 and this is slide number four referring to EVs specifically. We have 66,5001 which is up 17% uh yearon-year growth. That is a staggering amount of increase. So we are not talking about a mild uptick or a bump. We’re talking about more than double the amount of EVs that are coming out. And there’s there’s more to this story, which I’m going to get to in just a second, but let’s just stick with the Q3 earnings numbers. Ford is also reporting record quarter uh for their electric vehicles in Q3. similar to General Motors, not quite to the same extent, but still very respectable u for um a company that’s rolling up into third place. And really, you know, people compare Ford to Chevy and it outpaces them. But if you compare GM to Ford, then GM superseds, but I think it’s semantics at this point. Basically, the point is everyone’s selling more electric vehicles. Tesla themselves, which was suffering from brand erosion, is now seen a massive rebound with 7% uh increase in sales and has been quite a few moons on the calendar before Tesla has seen an actual bump in sales occur. So, we’re in a momentum cycle where electric vehicles are selling fast and they’re increasing in sales. Okay. So, what that means is the tax credit loss was a booster shot for electric vehicle adoption. And now we’re in the um after effects or the hangover or whatever you want to call. And initially the thought, you know, Jim Farley I think was kind of echoing sentiment that was commonly held that around 5% in Q4, but I’m very rapidly adjusting my perspective on what those numbers will be because as I said Tesla increased 7% yearon year with their sales and as we all know just now they released a lowerc cost car. The problem is that this tax credit being removed was telegraphed so far in advance that all the automakers were able to calibrate a response because they’re in the business of making money. They don’t want to see their sales drop off a cliff. So, they’ve been sitting there in their boardrooms and focus groups saying, “What can we do? What’s the plan? How can we keep the inertia moving forward in order to ensure that these cars that are um being made and you know we’re making a profit on continue to be sold and John Maroy of Autoline Daily famously says that every car that is made is sold eventually. So really the question is how many cars are going to be produced and we have seen curtailing of um shifts for the upcoming Chevrolet Bolt uh being uh advertised and I actually question the the um the sincerity of advertising that you’re decreasing shifts because I actually think that’s going to be that that was a purposeful injection into uh discourse saying that they were going to be curtailing a shift. shift at the Kansas City stamping plant that makes the Chevrolet Bolt because I think it’s going to be so successful that when they add that shift back, it’ll be so newsworthy that it will just help propel uh interest in the um in the new badged uh Chevrolet Volt even more. So, that’s my personal opinion. I think it was a rope a doe. Regardless, time will tell about that. But the automakers had a chance to actually look at what was going to be the new normal once the tax credit was removed. And if we roll the clock back, cars uh electric vehicles were selling just fine prior to the um tax credit being available. And it stands to reason that electric vehicles are going to do just fine um once it’s removed after there’s a certain amount of readjustment. I think these automakers have done such a good job of calibrating what the landscape is going to look like after the removal of the tax credit. It seems like headline after headline after a headline. First, we have Hyundai saying that they’re going to just like lop a certain amount off the uh cost of ionic fives. Then we’re hearing that Tesla is immediately starting to make available lower cost Model 3s and Model Y’s, skinny down Model 3s and Model Y’s. Um, we’re hearing, we don’t know the spec specifics, but we’re hearing that the Chevrolet Bolt will start to be produced out of Kansas City before years end. And uh, that’s said to be uh, sub 30,000. It’s speculated, sub 30,000. And when you don’t have to do oil changes and the fuel for your vehicle or the electricity that propels your vehicle costs less than gasoline, um, and it doesn’t break down as much. Uh, these things really start selling themselves as better mousetrap. So, I’m actually highly impressed with the automotive industries response to the loss of the $7,500 federal tax credit in the United States with the um offers that are being made, the new models that are in short succession getting released immediately. It’s like this whole thing was scripted and the incredible boom that occurred in the electric vehicle um industry just prior to the loss of the $7,500 tax credit. So, it’s like there’s inertia and then all of a sudden all these headlines are coming out saying, “Hey, don’t worry about the loss of the $7,500 tax credit. We got you. We got lower price models. We’re doing discounts on our cars. keep coming in and buying your electric cars if that’s what you want to do. And uh so I don’t think what we’re looking at is a stifling effect to the degree that was anticipated prior to of dipping down to 5%. I don’t know what the number is, but I would not be surprised if Q4 2025 electric vehicle sales is at about 8% of total electric or total cars sold in the United States. So, this is speculation on my part obviously, but what we do have hard numbers is that Q3 was a record quarter for electric vehicles in the United States. Thank you very much for watching. [Music]
Walter brings us sales stats on Q3 EV sales and tell us what he believes is going to happen in Q4.
Out of Spec Rivian Referral: https://rivian.com/configurations/list?reprCode=KYLE1997381
Tesla Referral Code: https://ts.la/harrison74367
For further inquiries please email info@outofspecstudios.com
#ev #evtaxcredit #evsales
