The year is 2022; the pandemic has ended, airports are once again bustling with cheap suits and cheaper bourbon, you no longer need to wear a hazmat suit to take your dog out for a shit in the morning. Life is good, and the best selling crossover in the United States is an electric vehicle; the Tesla Model Y.
I lead with this only half in jest. Over the past 18 months Tesla has pulled a rabbit out of it’s hat with Model 3 deliveries. They’re on track for an excess of 200,000 units in 2020, and cutting out the months of March-June gives them a theoretical 2020 sales volume, sans-pandemic, of over 300,000 units. This puts them, theoretically, at #9 in total sales volume for all vehicles & #3 for sedans.
WARNING: Some brash assumptions incoming.
Extrapolating their upper and lower bound sales at 28,000 and 35,000 units projected in 2021 gives me a sales volume ceiling for the Model 3 at 378,000 units for 2021, AKA potentially the #1 selling sedan in the US. That brings us to a combination of things; first and foremost the fact that crossovers inherently sell better in the US than sedans, thus pushing this ceiling figure higher for the Model Y prior to considerations of battery supply and such. And second things second, general demand for EVs appears to have finally shifted from “Bay Area Tech Bros” towards the general public. Ever the more evidence of this would be the validation of companies like Ford & VW finally launching valid EV contenders with the Mach-e and the ID4.
Speaking of those two, why won’t they drive away volume from Tesla? Short answer, they almost certainly will. I think the Model Y will take the top spot anyways, and that it’ll drag sales of it’s competitors with it. Here I expect we’ll see at least a continuous, if not accelerating rate of adoption. This gives a theoretical EV total sales figure for 2022 of well over 1,000,000 vehicles, likely close to the 1.5M vehicles mark. I’ll cut myself off here but just for fun toss in my projected breakdown of those sales below
Total 2022 EV Sales: 1.45M Vehicles
Tesla Model 3: 335k
Tesla Model Y: 488k
Tesla Model S: 120k
VW ID4: 227k
VW ID6: 55k
Ford Mustang Mach-e: 86k
Others: 139k