Tesla Is Still Winning the EV Race In 2023
“It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning's winning.”
I’m reluctant to call Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto one of the great philosophers of our time, but his line in the inaugural Fast & Furious movie is as true about street racing as it is about anything else. And in the current electric vehicle sales race, Tesla is the clear winner in mid-2023—this, despite an aging lineup of vehicles, tactics that make the rest of the car business nervous and a dependence on non-car products to entice buyers.
Things could’ve gone very differently this year. I certainly thought so about six months ago. This was supposed to be the year that Tesla’s slew of increasingly dated cars faced real, direct competition for the first time ever; when its CEO’s objectively disastrous foray into social media ownership took attention away from his core business; and when most other car companies got truly serious about creating a future without gasoline.
But now that we have insight into what EVs people bought — or didn’t buy — in the first and second quarters of this year, the numbers tell a different story. Tesla is still the clear leader in EV sales, moving almost half a million cars globally in just the past three months. The Model Y is the best-selling car in the world. The rest of the competition that was supposed to show up and eat Elon Musk’s lunch? Not even remotely close.
