Summary
- Combining SUVs and Light Trucks, they made up 80% of new vehicle sales in 2023
- SUVs are selling often in the 200,000 to 400,000 units range
- Import SUVs are outselling American-made SUVs by a nearly 2:1 ratio
- Some cars are keeping up, albeit just, like the Toyota Camry and the Tesla Model 3
- We think that unless there is a major revolution in vehicle technology to drag customers back to cars, Americans are in love with SUVs and CUVs, and the trend looks to grow even more in 2024
If you’ve spent any amount of time on a freeway, highway, or interstate in the US at all in the past 10 years, one thing you’ll have noticed is that there has a been a gradual, but still noticeable, shift towards SUVs, CUVs, and light trucks as the most common type of vehicle.
This trend has not shown any signs of slowing down, either. In fact, since 2022, the most common vehicle on the road is a utility vehicle or a light truck instead of a coupe or sedan car. In 2023, SUVs and light trucks became the most bought out of all all vehicles, with SUVs taking 60% of sales, and trucks another 20%. That left only 20% of sales for cars.
Which SUVs are the ones driving the trend? Are there any cars that are still selling well and show a potential recovery for the “smaller” vehicles?
Which Models Are Driving SUV Sales?
Go back to 2010, and only about 20 to 25% of the vehicles on US roads were SUVs. Now, in 2024, they make up roughly 54% of all vehicles on the road when bundled in with light trucks and including CUVs as well.
Despite what many might like to say, it has been the Japanese that are driving SUV sales the most, with models from Nissan, Honda, Toyota, and Mitsubishi (before they decided to go industrial). However, of them all, the Toyota RAV4 has been a continual sales success and one of the most popular SUVs outright for many years, even during the global pandemic.
In fact, with the exception for the very first year it was offered for sale, it has never sold less than 130,000 units per annum in North America, and for 2023, it sold 434,943 units across all trims.
On the EV side of things, Tesla has locked down the battery-powered SUV market with the Model Y. Much like the RAV4, which does have a hybrid model available, the Tesla SUV sold under 100,000 in its first year on sale, then went absolutely stratospheric with sales, not dipping below 160,000 since 2021.
Yet, compared to the RAV4, it paled in North American sales with 385,900 units sold. Much of that can be attributed to the slowdown in EV interest, as well as the continuous issues of range anxiety and charge times when going on longer road trips.
In one of those ironic twists, American SUVs are not faring all that well, at least in the last few years. Take, for example, the GMC Acadia, a full size monster of an SUV. It sold 99,430 units in 2020, but sold only 53,025 in 2022, and even with the recovery out of the pandemic, only 66,322 units in 2023.
The best selling full-size American SUV remains, as it has been for years now, the Ford Explorer. If you bunch in the Explorer ST, the “sporty” model, it moved 187,061 units in 2019, 207,763 in 2022, and dipped down to 186,769 units during 2023.
Even the most basic analysis shows that on the average, Asian-origin SUVs are outselling American-origin SUVs. There are some very good American CUVs and SUVs, but the market balance is definitely in South Korea’s and Japan’s favor
Are There Any Cars Keeping Up At All?
It should come as no surprise that with over 11 million vehicles sold in 2023, Toyota tops the sales lists for cars with the Camry. It is far more likely that Hell will freeze over and become a ski resort before this stalwart sales titan will relinquish its top spot of nearly 20 years in a row. The Camry moved a respectable 290,649 units last year, beating all of the American-made SUVs.
Toyota very nearly took first and second place for 2023, however Tesla and the Model 3, especially after its mid-year price drop of nearly a full third of its MSRP, just outsold the Toyota Corolla. The Model 3 moved 232,700 units, and the Camry 232,370 units.
The first car to drop below the sales figures of the Ford Explorer is the ubiquitous Honda Civic in all of its trims. One of the most reliable sales vehicles (pun intended) for the Japanese company over the past half a decade, the Civic is almost always guaranteed to leave the lot almost as quickly as inventory arrives, with 200,381 units sold in 2023.
However, the segment hit the hardest was that of the performance vehicle. Dragging its feet at dead last was the Alfa Romeo Giulia, including the near-supercar Quadrifoglio version, with 3,461 units sold across the entirety of 2023. It has also been on a sales slide for 6 years now, with an all time high of 11,519 units in 2018.
The biggest shock for 2023 was that Chevrolet had very poor sales overall, but the Camaro was the problem child in 2023 with just 31,029 sold. To put that in perspective, Chevrolet sold more C8 Corvettes than Camaros in 2023 at 34,354, and the Corvette, a low production supercar, has a nearly 2 year long waitlist as it stands!
Do Cars Stand A Chance?
With only 20% of new vehicles sold in 2023 being of the family sedan, sport coupe, or any other form of car, there is still a viable market for those wanting to buy cars. As well, many companies are still producing cars, as many Asian and European countries either do not have the infrastructure or capacity to handle larger SUVs on their roads.
That said, we think that the car is teetering on the razor’s edge at the moment. In much the same way that manual transmissions were the standard and an automatic would cost you extra, nowadays only just over 1% of all available cars have a manual as an option or only transmission, and the automatic is the standard.
We think that only a full-out revolution in vehicles would entice Americans back into cars. The rise of EVs was supposed to be that revolution, but as our past analyses have shown, that has pretty much fizzled out for the moment.
