While Tesla easily remains the best-selling manufacturer of EVs in the United States, the Koreans are doing surprisingly well, given that they remain ineligible for the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
Registration data reported by Automotive News reveals that a total of 489,454 new EVs were sold by Tesla in the January-September period, giving it a massive 57.4% share of the market. In second was Chevrolet with 50,160 registrations (5.9%), Ford with 46,547 sales (5.5%), and Hyundai in fourth with 40,612 sales (4.8%). However, Hyundai’s total swells to 63,916 (7.5%) when you include the Kia brand that sold 23,304 EVs in the U.S. in the first nine months of this year.
The Hyundai Motor Group’s sales may not be staggering but they do show that demand for its portfolio of EVs remains strong, even though they do not receive the EV tax credit, meaning many of them are more expensive than locally-built rivals from the likes of Tesla and Chevrolet. The only way shoppers can get the $7,500 tax credit is if they lease a new Hyundai or Kia EV and leasing isn’t something that appeals to all car buyers.
South Korean car manufacturers have expressed concern about their ineligibility to receive the tax credit since last year. The nation has called the Inflation Reduction Act’s rules “discriminatory” and has pushed the U.S. government to provide it with tax credits, despite its current EVs not being manufactured in the United States.
Read: Hyundai Begins Work On $5.5 Billion U.S. Plant That Will Build EVs By Mid-2025
While it remains unclear if the Biden administration will make such a concession, the Hyundai Motor Group is hard at work building a massive $5.5 billion plant in Georgia that will build EVs from the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands. Construction at the site started in October last year and when it is up and running, it will have an annual capacity of 300,000 vehicles. The start of commercial production has been penciled in for the first half of 2025.
