by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street:

Market share of EVs reaches 5.3%. The registrations data is out in all its glorious detail.

It was a tough year for selling new vehicles in California. Total new vehicle registrations in California in 2019 fell 5.5% from a year earlier, to 1.89 million vehicles, the third year in a row of declines, according to registration data released today by the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA).

Registrations were down 9.5% from 2016. This was far sharper than the decline in US auto sales of 2.5% over the same period. Registrations are now back to where’d they’d been in 2007, before the collapse during the Financial Crisis:

The fourth quarter was particularly ugly: Registrations fell 7.0% from Q4 a year earlier, the 11th quarterly year-over-year decline in a row, and the worst so far.

“Registrations” are not the same as “deliveries.” The difference is timing. After a vehicle is “delivered” to a customer, it takes a little while before it’s “registered” with the DMV. But the timing difference is about the same every year, and so year-over-year comparisons neutralize it.

These are total registrations and include units bought by fleets, such as rental car companies. Retail registrations alone fell 5.9% in 2019, to just 1.66 million units, having plunged 8.2% year-over-year in the San Francisco Bay Area but “only” 5.2% in Southern California.

Battery-Electric Vehicles reach market share of 5.3%.

Even as overall registrations fell in 2019, those of battery-electric vehicles rose 5.2% to a record 99,704 vehicles, nearly triple from 2015. Of them, 76% were Teslas. The market share of EVs reached a record 5.3%-share of total registrations.

California is huge for Tesla. In the whole year, 72,625 Teslas were registered in California, accounting for roughly 20% of Tesla’s world-wide deliveries in the year. Tesla’s year-total registrations in California were up only 3.3% from the prior year, as Model 3 registrations soared, but Model S and Model X registrations collapsed.

Q4 was a big problem: Registrations of Teslas plunged 46%, to 13,999 vehicles, compared to Q4 2018 (25,961 vehicles). It seems many of the people in California who’d always wanted a Tesla have now bought a Tesla. And demand was largely sated in the state. So Tesla started shipping the vehicles to other markets, including overseas to sell them there.

While Tesla’s market share globally was a minuscule 0.4% in 2019, and in the US only 1.1%, in California it was a respectable 3.8%, sandwiched near the bottom of the list between Subaru and Mazda:

In the US overall, the big four automakers are in this order: GM, Ford, Toyota, and FCA. But in California, Toyota reigns supreme, with a share of 20.5%, followed by Honda, then further down by GM and Ford, and further down still by FCA:

But the used-vehicle market is huge and doing fine.

Used-vehicle registrations rose 2.5% to 3.82 million vehicles. This is over double the number of new vehicle registrations (1.89 million).

About a quarter of them were three years old or newer. This includes nearly all vehicles that come out of rental fleets and lease-returns. These vehicles, usually with 20,000-50,000 miles, look nearly new and can be great buys.

Registrations of vehicles six years old or newer jumped by 7.8%. In this category, in terms of automaker, Toyota ruled with a share of 13.9%, followed by Ford (10.5%) and by Honda (9.5%). In terms of models in this category, the #1 bestseller was the Honda Civic.

But old rules: Of the 3.82 million used vehicle registrations in 2019, about 2.3 million, or 60% were seven years or older.

All categories of used vehicles gained, with even “cars” ticking up 0.1% while light trucks jumped 6.0%. And they increased for all areas of origin:

• Japanese brands rose 2.6% to 1.76 million. Includes: Honda Civic, by far the #1 best-selling used vehicle with nearly 60,000 registrations, #2 bestseller Honda Accord, #3 Toyota Corolla, #4 Toyota Camry, #5 Nissan Altima


• Domestic brands rose 1.0% to 1.32 million. Includes the #6 bestseller, Ford F-Series trucks, #9 Ford Fusion, #10 Chevrolet Silverado, #11 Ram trucks


• European brands rose 5.6% to 0.55 million. Includes #14 BMW 3-series


• Korean brands rose 4.5% to 0.18 million. Includes #16 Hyundai Elantra.

The fact that the used-vehicle market is still on solid footing, while the new-vehicle market is deteriorating across the US – and in California sharply so – has been widely ascribed to the “affordability problem” automakers have produced by increasing vehicle prices and focusing on building and marketing their more expensive and high-profit trucks, SUVs, and compact SUVs, rather than lower-end cars, where profit margins are paper-thin.

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