2023 U.S. Sales At Halftime: GM Winning At Toyota’s Expense -

GM tops Toyota for second year running, Tesla decimates the EV competition and compact crossovers are the largest segment

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2023 U.S. Sales At Halftime: GM Winning At Toyota’s Expense

by Chris Chilton

July 15, 2023 at 16:49

The global car industry has been wrestling with a mixture of COVID-related shutdowns and parts shortages over the past few years, meaning that sales figures haven’t been truly reflective of consumer demand. But now most automakers are getting back on track, the sales figures for the first half of 2023 give us a clearer look at the state of the new vehicle market in North America.

Figures from the Automotive News Research & Data Center show GM beating out Toyota in the table of biggest selling automakers, as it did last year, and pulling away. GM shifted 1.29 million units, and was up 18 percent, while Toyota’s sales fell 0.7 percent to 1.04 million. Fifth-placed Stellantis was the only other automaker to see sales fall (by 1.3 percent to 809,000); the others making up the top 10 all grew by more than 9 percent.

Sales By Automaker

Brands

There was more bad news for Toyota over in the brands table. It was down 2.8 percent to 889,000, putting it in second place behind Ford, which grew 11 percent to 961,000, and under pressure from third-place Chevrolet, whose sales grew by 17 percent to 846,000.

Segments

The data reveals sales growth in nearly every segment of the North American market, the biggest of which at over 1.2 million units, compact crossovers, was up by 15 percent. Full-size pickups weren’t far behind in volume and were up 11 percent, while sales of large crossovers grew by 10 percent. Midsize SUVs (down 9.8 percent to 338,000) was the only one of the biggest eight segments to suffer a drop in sales.

EVs

No one will be surprised to learn that Tesla dominated the EV segment taking three out of the top five spots. Its biggest performer was the Model Y that found 191,000 buyers, up 76 percent, in no small part due to some aggressive price cuts, while the Model 3 registered 122,000 sales, and was up by 35 percent. The Volkswagen ID.4 and Ford Mustang Mach-E were miles behind on 16,500 and 14,000 respectively, but while the VW’s numbers were up by 273 percent, Ford’s fell by 21 percent.