Here's How EVs Really Sold In 2023

Lawrence Hodge

January 15, 2024 at 12:00 PM·8 min read

There’s been a lot of narrative around EV sales and it may be hard to follow. Some are so pro EV that they’re willing to ignore the data and automakers changing strategies thats shows that EV sales have cooled off. The other side of that coin is those that don’t want EVs to succeed are celebrating this cooling off and shifting of strategies, ignoring that while sales slowed, marketshare grew.

The truth is sales topped over a million for the first time. In fact, sales totaled just about 2,292,859, well ahead of estimates. To paint a clearer picture of how EVs performed last year, let’s take a look at each automakers sales data.

25,039 total sales

Audi’s numbers are slick because the brand lists every single individual EV model, even though some models are variants of a main model line; for instance Sportback variants of e-tron models are listed separately even though the same isn’t done for gas powered models.

BMW

45,417 total sales

BMW doesn’t individually list the sales numbers of its i line of EVs since most are variants of gas powered models. That didn’t stop the brand from releasing its total EVs sales numbers though; 31.6 percent of those total sales (14,374) were in Q4 of 2023.

Fisker

4,700 total sales

Despite being an American auto company, Fisker didn’t release just how many vehicles it sold in the U.S. specifically. Instead, the company elected to release its total worldwide results. Fisker says it produced 10,142 of its Ocean EV (the only model sold right now.) Of those, 4,700 actually made it to customers.

Ford

72,608 total sales

Ford, which groups its EV sales under its Model e division, says sales for its three EV models are all up. The F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit are all up 55, three and 18 percent respectively.

That works out to 24,165 Lightnings, 40,771 Mustang Mach-Es and 7,672 E-Transits. This sales increase makes sense as inventories of both the Mach-E and Lightning have greatly increased since 2022.

General Motors

75,883 total sales

GM has kept its EV sales numbers close to its chest the last few years; the company has had trouble ramping up EV production. Things may have changed though as the company says it sold 75,883 EVs in 2023, up 93 percent from 2022.

Looking at each brand, things get interesting. At Chevy, the Bolt and its EUV variant— both of which were discontinued for 2023 but will return for ’25 — sales were up 6 percent with 62,045 sold. Just 482 Blazer EVs were sold and 461 Silverado EVs.

At Cadillac, an increase in production and inventory was definitely on the brands side. Cadillac sold 9,154 Lyriq, 41 percent of which were sold in Q4. This is a massive 7,403 percent increase over 2022 when just 122 sold the whole year.

GMC Hummer EV sales were up as well. GMC moved 3,244 of the massive EV in 2023, a 270 percent increase over 2022.

Hyundai

46,917 total sales

That number is made up of Ioniq 5 (33,918) and Ioniq 6 (12,999) sales. The Ioniq 5 saw a 48 percent increase in sales vs. 2022. While Hyundai touts record sales for 2023, its EV sales made up just 6.2 percent of its total (801,195) sales.

Jaguar/Land Rover

2,978 total sales

Until the all new Range Rover EV debuts, JLR sells just a single EV in the Jaguar I-Pace. While the brands sold a total of 42,000 vehicles in North America in 2023, just 2,798 were the I-Pace.

Kia

19,992 total sales

Like its Hyundai parent, Kia also had a year of record sales. The brand sold 782,451 cars in the U.S. in 2023, it’s best sales year since 2021. The near 20,000 EV sales come from a combo of 18,879 EV6 sales and surprisingly 1,118 EV9 sales. While the Niro offers an EV variant, it’s not known exactly how many were sold as Kia includes the Niro EV into the Niro sales numbers as a whole.

The 19,992 sales of the EV6 and EV9 make up just 2.5 percent of Kia total U.S. sales in 2023.

Lucid

6,001 total sales

The startup EV maker announced that they actually produced 8,428 EVs, but just over 6,000 of those actually made it to customer hands. 1,734 of its EVs were sold in Q4 2023.

Toyota/Lexus

14,715 total sales

Like GM, Toyota is a juggernaut. The company sold 2,248,477 vehicles in 2023. But Toyota tries to be slick by grouping its EVs and Hybrid sales numbers together. Like other companies, it refers to them as “electrified vehicles” in its sales. Breaking those down, you see the brand is on a roll with its hybrid sales: 29.2 percent (657,327) of that total number are hybrids sales. But with just two EVs for sale in the Toyota BZ4X and its Lexus RZ sibling, the brand sold just 14,715 ( 9,329 BZ4X and 5,386 RZ) EVs.

Mazda

Bless Mazda’s heart. The Japanese automaker sold exactly 100 of its MX-30 EVs in the US in 2023. I’d really like to know who those 100 people were.

Mercedes-Benz

43,202 total sales

Mercedes saw an increase in demand for its EVs. The company said sales increased 248 percent over 2022. Looking at each individual model, the EQB crossover was the brands best selling EV with 11,767 sold; the EQE sedan was the worst selling with 5,154 sold.

Mini

2023 Mini Electric

Despite selling the Mini Hardtop EV, Mini didn’t release any specific sales data for the Mini EV. While I thought this might have something to do with it being a variant of the regular Mini, the brand lists individual sales numbers for other Mini variants like the Clubman and Convertible.

Nissan

20,616 sales

Despite being cheaper, the Leaf sold less than the Ariya — 13,164 buyers showed up at Nissan dealers to take the Ariya (which has a starting price of just under $45,000) home. Meanwhile, just 7,152 Leafs found buyers. That number is a 40.5 percent drop vs. 2022.

Polestar

54,600 total sales

Polestar didn’t exactly say how many cars it sold in the US. However the brand sold just under 55,000 cars worldwide in 2023, an increase of six percent vs 2022 the company says. Disappointingly, sales were down in 39 percent in Q4 2023 over the same time in 2022.

Porsche

7,570 total sales

Porsche recored record sales in the U.S. for 2023 selling a total of 75,415 cars. Of those, 7,570 were its Taycan EV. Porsche says that not only were Taycan sales up 4.1 percent over 2022, but they also represented 10 percent of its US sales.

Rivian

50,122 sales

While Rivian exceeded its production estimate of 54,000 by producing 57,232 vehicles, 50,122 of those vehicles were actually delivered.

Subaru

8,872 total sales

Subaru sells a single EV, the badge engineered Solterra developed with Toyota. While sales increased 865.4 percent vs. 2022, remember the situation the BZ4x and Solterra were in that year. Both had stop sale orders issued over them for a recall. As a result, just 919 were sold the whole year.

Tesla

654,888 total sales

Love them or hate them, Tesla is the sales leader of EVs with over 1.8 million sold globally in 2023. Keep in mind however that the brands US sales are an estimate as the company released its global sales rather than sales by country.

Tesla sold just under 655,000 vehicles, an increase of 25.4 percent over 2022. This means that Tesla sales accounted for 56.5 percent of the US’ total EV sales.

Vinfast

Vinfast hasn’t seemed to release any of its 2023 full year results just yet. The only info that could be found are tidbits, one Q3 2023 quarterly report that has worldwide sales and another based off something the company’s CEO mentioned: in an interview in late October 2023, Vinfast CEO CEO Le Thi Thu Thuy described the U.S. market as “difficult” and that the company had only sold 2,009 of its EVs so far.

Volvo

13,609 total sales

Volvo groups both plug-in hybrid and its all electric models under its Recharge moniker. Taken on its surface, Volvo sold 35,657 Recharge models in 2023. Broken down though it’s not as much. Until the new EX30 and EX90 EVs arrive, Volvo sells just two EVs in the XC40 and C40 Recharge models. The brand managed to move just under 14,000 in 2023. While that’s an 86 percent increase in sales over 2022, sales were down 39 percent in December.

Volkswagen

37,789 total sales

Until the ID.7 sedan and ID.Buzz arrives, VW sells just one EV in the ID.4 That alone managed to sell almost 38,000. Those sales are an impressive 84.2 percent increase over 2022. While VW says its total sales increased 9.3 percent and that this was largely due to the ID.4, the ID.4 sales make up only 11.5 percent of VW’s 329,029 sales.