Lowest US EV Sales Since 3rd Quarter of 2022 — CHARTS

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As expected, the US electric vehicle market took a hit in the 4th quarter. With the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ending at the end of the 3rd quarter (after Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump prematurely killed it), people rushed to buy EVs before October, and then the market in the 4th quarter was in a serious lull, naturally. In this article, I’m just going to look at the 4th quarter results. However, following this, I’ll do another report on full-year sales trends.

Interactive, embedded versions of all of the charts are on the bottom of this article.

Starting off, we can see here that after years of consistent year-over-year sales growth, EV sales in the 4th quarter were down significantly year over year. However, if you look closely, you can see here that Tesla’s Q4 sales were up a little bit in 2025 over 2024. Non-Tesla EV sales, meanwhile, were lower than they were in the 4th quarter of the three previous years.

Overall, combining them all, Q4 2025 sales are just barely above Q4 2022 sales. Will they ever dip this low again in the 4th quarter? I don’t think so. However, we have seen several automakers pull back their EV plans and even existing production significantly as US fuel economy standards have effectively been killed.

Looking at sales by model, as always, the Tesla Model Y and Tesla Model 3 stand far above the crowd. The Model Y, in particular, is just in a totally different category. Behind them, the Ford Mustang Mach-E got the bronze medal with a clear lead over the otherwise. Then the Hyundai IONIQ 5, Rivian R1S, and Chevy Equinox EV round out the models with more than 5,000 sales in the 4th quarter. The three more models got over 4,000 sales, the Cadillac LYRIQ, Ford F-150 Lightning, and Tesla Cybertruck.

The charts above give another view of how overall EV sales changed in the 4th quarter year over year going back to 2021. As you can see, despite big drops compared to 2024 and 2023, and a small increase over 2022, the US EV market was still up enormously compared to Q4 2021. That’s in spite of the market being warped by the end of US subsidies. So, progress?