According to a recent article published by Automotive News, Tesla appears to have taken an early lead in 2022 US luxury car sales. Based on Experian registration data, Tesla overtook BMW in January as the leader in the luxury segment.
This comes as no surprise based on what we've seen over the last several years. However, many certainly didn't expect this years ago. To several analysts and market experts, envisioning Tesla outselling luxury car rivals was laughable, and bankruptcy was considered much more plausible.
At any rate, after the Tesla Model 3 arrived in 2017, the electric automaker started outselling individual competing models, and it eventually became the US leader in luxury vehicle sales for 2021. This, despite the fact that Tesla's cars aren't nearly as luxurious as the rivals they're outselling. In some cases, they're more expensive, and they're certainly not easy to come by.
Experian data shows that Tesla's new US registrations in January 2022 were 49% higher than they were in the same month in 2021. Meanwhile, BMW's year-over-year growth was only at 8.2%. Tesla's January US registrations came in at over 37,000 while BMW's were around 30,600.
To be fair, most automakers are seeing a huge drop in sales due to the chip shortage, other supply constraints, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, Tesla was outselling luxury rivals in many cases long before any of the aforementioned barriers.
It's also important to note that January is typically a weak sales month for many reasons. The first month of the quarter is generally the weakest as far as sales are concerned, and that's especially true of the earlier quarters in the year, as sales ramp up as the year moves on.
This is especially true for Tesla, which has set a trend of delivering a multitude of models at the end of each quarter, with quarterly sales growing notably as the year progresses. To see that Tesla was already up 49% year over year in January 2022 provides an interesting forecast of what may lie ahead.
Keep in mind, Tesla is also impacted by many of the same roadblocks as its rivals, yet deliveries are improving. In addition, the US electric automaker is still only delivering vehicles out of the same two factories it has been relying on for years.
Soon, Tesla will also be producing and delivering vehicles out of new factories, one in Texas and another in Germany. Moreover, as we recently shared, Tesla reportedly has major expansion plans underway in China.
