• Tesla is finally resorting to ads — something Elon Musk has avoided for years.
• The company upped its ad spending to $6.4 million in 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Investors are losing patience with Tesla amid stiff EV competition and managerial chaos.

Things are not going well for Tesla.

Between bad press about the electric vehicles themselves and the chaotic whims of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Tesla’s stock value has dropped this year by nearly 30%.

Tesla’s sales have gotten so bad that the company has resorted to advertising — something Elon Musk famously said he can’t stand.

“I hate advertising,” Musk posted on Twitter, now X, in 2019.

Despite Musk’s dislike for ads, the company spent some $6.4 million on them in the United States in 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported. That’s compared to a paltry $175,000 in ad spending in 2022. Tesla’s ads have touted its Model Y on Meta and Google, according to their respective ad libraries.

The company has faced competition from buyers who prefer a hybrid vehicle to a full EV, as well as companies offering incentives to switch, such as BMW’s limited-time $1,000 reward for customers who trade in for its own EV.

Musk agreed to try advertising in May after the suggestion came up at a company shareholder meeting, The Wall Street Journal reported. Investors are reportedly losing patience with Tesla’s performance and managerial chaos.

“We’ll try a little advertising and see how it goes,” Musk said, assuaging a meeting attendee who suggested Tesla lacks appeal to wealthy drivers seeking a more sporty car, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Saturday.

DETROIT — New vehicle sales in the U.S. rose nearly 5% from January through March, as buyers stayed in the market despite high interest rates. But electric vehicle sales growth slowed during the first three months of the year, with mainstream buyers wary of limited range and a lack of charging stations.

Automakers, most of which reported U.S. sales numbers Tuesday, sold nearly 3.8 million vehicles in the first quarter versus a year ago, for an annual rate of 15.4 million in sales.

With inventory on dealer lots growing toward pre-pandemic levels, auto companies were forced to reduce prices. J.D. Power said the average sales price in March was $44,186, down 3.6% from a year ago and the largest recorded decline for the month of March.

The company said automaker discounts in March were two-thirds higher than a year ago, around $2,800. That includes increased availability of lease deals. J.D. Power expected leases to account for almost a quarter of retail sales last month, up from 19.6% in March of last year.

Sales of electric vehicles grew only 2.7% to just over 268,000 during the quarter, far below the 47% growth that fueled record sales and a 7.6% market share last year. The slowdown, led by Tesla, confirms automakers’ fears that they moved too quickly to pursue EV buyers. The EV share of total U.S. sales fell to 7.1% in the first quarter.

Nearly all of the early adopters and people concerned about internal-combustion engines’ impact on the planet have bought electric vehicles, and now automakers are facing more skeptical mainstream buyers, Edmunds Director of Insights Ivan Drury said.

“That’s where all of those headwinds come in that we’ve seen in survey data,” Drury said. “Those real-world concerns about charging infrastructure, battery life, insurance costs.”

Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke cautioned it appears the industry has already hit its spring sales peak as buyers expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates later in the year.

“Interest rates are still near 24-year highs, and consumers just don’t have the urgency to buy, with the expectation that rates will be lower later this year,” he wrote in a market report. Automobile interest rates still are averaging around 7% per year.

Drury said vehicles that are more affordable are selling faster than more expensive ones. Sales of many large and expensive SUVs fell during the quarter as companies faced more frugal buyers.

“Small sells, whether it be size or the sales price,” Drury said.

For example, General Motors’ Chevrolet brand sold 37,588 Trax small SUVs in the quarter, more than a fivefold increase from a year ago. By itself, the Trax (shown above), which starts around $21,500, outsold the entire Cadillac brand.

Most automakers reported strong year-over-year sales increases from January through March, but General Motors, Stellantis, Kia and Tesla all reported declines.

GM, the top-selling automaker in the U.S., reported that sales were down 1.5% for the quarter, while Stellantis sales were off nearly 10%. Kia sales were down 2.5%. All three companies reported strong first-quarter sales a year ago.

Toyota reported a large sales increase, 20%, for the quarter, and said combined sales of its hybrids and lone electric vehicle rose 36%. Honda said its sales increased 17%, while Nissan and Subaru both posted 7% increases. Hyundai reported an increase of just 0.2%.

Tesla global sales were off nearly 9%, which the company blamed on factory changes to build an updated Model 3, shipping delays in the Red Sea and an attack that knocked out power to its factory in Germany. Motorintelligence.com estimated that Tesla’s U.S. sales were down more than 13% in the first quarter.

March and Q1 2024 sales figures are in and with them, an update on sales of the 2024 Mazda Miata. Bad news, sports (car) fans: 2024 is a slow one so far for our favorite roadster. And if our index means anything, then that’s bad news for the enthusiast market. But don’t worry; this is an entirely unscientific thing that we do entirely for our own amusement. And yours, hopefully. 

See, the Autoblog Miata Index is the only automotive sales metric that truly matters … in our minds. It simply measures the number of Mazda Miatas sold so far in 2024. Well, technically, we started by counting the Miata sales from 2023, but you get the idea. Why? Well, we like Miatas, for starters, and as a metric for how many True Believers are out there buying cars, it’s as arbitrarily good (or bad) as anything else. So long as folks are still buying our favorite little Japanese roadster, then the enthusiast outlook can’t be all bad, right?

Right?

Anyway, here’s our March and Q1 update:

The numbers

March 2024 Miata sales:

• Mazda Miata: 174 (-70.2%)
• Mazda Miata RF: 412 (-17.6%)
• Total: 436 (-45.9%)

Q1 2024 Miata sales:

• Mazda Miata: 457 (-66.0%)
• Mazda Miata RF: 954 (-23.5%)
• Total: 1,411 (-45.5%)

Blame winter all you want, but the cold season comes along in the North American winter every year, so that’s not a particularly good excuse for poor numbers when we’re comparing to the same period last winter. We’ll also note that the RF (which is the folding Targa-style top) has consistently outsold the convertible every month in 2024 so far, which makes sense for the dead of winter; that makes it unlikely that we’re looking at some sort of statistical outlier. Miata sales are simply off to a slow start in 2024. 

So far, 2024 is shaping up to be a slower year for Mazda’s little convertible than 2023. Mazda sold 8,973 Miatas in the U.S. last year — an increase of 45.4% over 2022 — and 15.7% over its total volume from 2019. So 2023 was a good year for the Miata — and as it turns out, a pretty darned good year for the industry overall. See? It’s science. 

2024 could be even bigger for our favorite roadster. Why? Updates. Whether you want to call this the ND 2.5 or simply the refreshed ND2, the 2024 Miata gets an updated differential and an overhauled infotainment system that is much more feature-rich and pleasant to use. But updates don’t always translate to sales improvements, especially when they’re accompanied by production downtime to accommodate new parts or designs. Fortunately, while these updates do include new components, they’re not anything wildly different from what’s already shipping, limiting any interruption to manufacturing. Hopefully, that means full steam ahead. Happy Miata-ing!

Note: Yes, this is silly. We’re fully aware it’s silly. This silliness may morph into some other form of silliness for any (or no) reason at all. Watch this space. Or don’t. -Hurd

Related Video

Half a decade ago, Ford gave us our first concrete proof that a new Bronco was in the works. At the time, we had no clue what would transpire when the revived 4×4 came to market, and now, nearly four years after is tumultuous launch, production has more or less stabilized, setting the stage for a showdown decades in the making. Sure, we can compare the 2024 Ford Bronco and 2024 Jeep Wrangler all day long, but the proof is in the pudding: Which one do Americans want to buy? 

2024 Q1 sales:

1. Jeep Wrangler – 38,308 (+ 1.0%)
2. Ford Bronco –  24,066 (– 25.9%)

U.S. shoppers were kind to the Jeep Wrangler in Q1 — surprising, considering it’s a convertible. Not only did Jeep outsell Ford in this niche, but Jeep even managed to outsell itself, beating last year’s Q1 total by just a few hundred units. It was one of several big wins for Stellantis, which is rapidly losing volume from the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Challenger and Charger, all of which have been discontinued but still remain in dealership inventories. 

2023 Q1 sales:

1. Jeep Wrangler – 37,971
2. Ford Bronco – 32,430

In 2023, Q1 belonged to Jeep. That trend continued throughout the year; by the end of December, Wrangler ended up outselling the Bronco by nearly 50%. And even with 105,665 units sold, Ford’s midsize off-roader underperformed the previous year by nearly 10%. As we noted in our 2023 sales trends recap, using data from the Covid era to gauge real-world popularity is fraught, but sometimes it’s all we’ve got. In the case of the Bronco, we can’t refer to 2019 sales data. Ford was still working through the aftershocks of the Bronco’s launch and a portfolio-wide initial quality crisis that would have slowed it down in 2023, not to mention the late-summer strike, however both the Bronco and Wrangler were targeted early on by the UAW. 

Meanwhile, Jeep managed to sell 156,581 Wranglers in the same period. That was also down from 2022 — by nearly 20%, in fact — and way down from 2019, when Jeep moved 228,032 of its soft-top four-wheelers. In the years leading up to 2020, the Wrangler was in danger of outselling the Toyota Camry. Today, the sedan enjoys a comfortable margin of more than 100,000 units. What happened? In a word, Bronco.  

Why they matter:

The beauty of this rivalry is that we, the enthusiast buyers, always win. Competition betters the breed, as it’s said, and we’ve seen clear evidence of that even in the course of a single generation of the Wrangler. The mere threat of Bronco on the horizon nudged Jeep’s engineers to develop the JL Wrangler as we know it today. Its predecessor had just one engine (the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6); the current truck has now been offered with five, including a 375-horsepower plug-in hybrid, a 470-horsepower V8 and a since-discontinued six-cylinder diesel. Since its launch, Ford has been hard at work keeping one step ahead of Jeep, with a Raptor model that nips at the Wrangler Rubicon 392’s heels in a straight line but can run circles around it on soft surfaces. 

Think about it this way: Jeep’s engineers could have made the 5.7-liter Hemi fit in the JK Wrangler, but they didn’t. Why? Because the Wrangler sold well just the way it was. Compounding that, it owned a segment consisting only of itself. With no pressure to be better, it simply carried on, and that’s an approach Jeep can no longer afford to take. The result is more cool Jeeps. What a world!

What to look for in 2024:

In a word, even footing. Ford is no longer as mired as it was when the Bronco launched, and with supply chain issues largely easing, things should only go smoother in 2024. Another item of note is a pesky little vehicle called the Toyota Land Cruiser. This time around, Toyota is aiming for the mainstream, meaning the Land Cruiser might be affordable enough to be considered alongside the Wrangler and Bronco. And since it shares its underpinnings with the new Tacoma, there’s even the potential for more enthusiast-friendly options. Even if it doesn’t end up competing directly, it could siphon off buyers who want a more premium experience without shelling out for a luxury badge. 

 

With Q1 in the books, we’re seeing the first real 2024 U.S. auto sales figures, and with them, some shakeups in segments where the pecking order was long-ago established. We said in January that the auto industry was returning to a semblance of normalcy after more than three years of supply chain tomfoolery and runaway inflation. Well, there may be a new normal yet. 

Customers lined up in droves to buy cars in 2023, making it the best year for auto sales since 2019. Surprise surprise, trucks remained relatively stratospheric. Big trucks, small trucks — even trucks that don’t do “truck” stuff. You name it, Americans want it. But what exactly are they buying? Here are the numbers — and why they matter.  A lot of the usual suspects are exactly where you’d find them, with the F-Series pickups right up top for the 47th year running. 

Here’s a look at how things are shaping up for pickups so far in 2024. 

Fullsize

Q1 2024 fullsize truck sales:

1. Total GM (Silverado + Sierra) – 198,584 (+ 2.3%)
2. Ford F-Series (all) – 152,943 (– 10.2%)
3. Chevrolet Silverado (all) – 129,987 (+ 2.4%)
4. Ram P/U (all) – 89,417 (– 15%)
5. GMC Sierra (all) – 68,597 (+ 2.1%)
6. Toyota Tundra – 15,337 (+ 41.3%)
7. Nissan Titan – 4,145 (+ 2.6%)

Why they matter:

Honestly, the half-ton pickup segment is pretty darned boring. The rankings haven’t changed from where they sat at the end of 2023, but there are some year-to-year changes that may be worth keeping an eye on in 2024. There’s obviously still plenty of demand for Toyota’s nearly-new Tundra; based on these numbers, production is still catching up. GM’s Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra combine for the most total pickups sold on a single platform, while Ford claims the crown for the most sold under a single nameplate. As is tradition, we’ll leave it to you to sort out who the “real” winner is. 

Chevy continues to put daylight between the Silverado and Ram. For a while, Auburn Hills had a tentative hold on the #2 nameplate behind F-Series. No longer. Also: Aww, Titan. 

Note: F-Series, Ram, Sierra and Silverado are inclusive of standard (F-150, 1500, et al), medium- (Silverado MD) and heavy-duty (F-250, 2500, et al) models. 

Midsize

Q1 2024 midsize truck sales:

1. Nissan Frontier – 19,744 (+ 16.6%)
2. Chevrolet Colorado – 14,922 (+ 12.6)
3. Jeep Gladiator – 12,989 (– 4.0%)
4. Toyota Tacoma – 8,310 (– 55.5%)
5. GMC Canyon – 5,484 (+ 9.3%)
6. Honda Ridgeline – 3,967 (– 22.3%)
7. Ford Ranger – 1,918 (– 83.3%)

Why they matter:

The midsize segment has been on a wild ride since the pandemic started but 2024 is throwing that for a loop for different reasons. Long gone are the supply-chain hurdles of the pandemic era; say hello to the churn of model year updates. With this segment rapidly re-expanding and competition becoming healthier, automakers are doing more to differentiate their trucks with each update, and updates mean disruptions in deliveries. 

That’s kind of a long way of telling Toyota fans not to panic. The Tacoma hasn’t been dethroned; the new one is simply in short supply. 

The other obvious outlier on this list is the Ford Ranger. Last place is not where we’d expect to find Ford’s midsizer, but clearly, retooling for the redesigned truck took its toll on production output. That may have been exacerbated by the UAW strike, but we’ll note that GM had no trouble moving plenty of Canyons and Colorados in the same time period despite ongoing quality control issues. Here’s hoping Ford is taking its time in the name of improving its own quality. 

Compact

Q1 2024 compact truck sales:

1. Ford Maverick – 39,061 (+ 81.9%)
2. Hyundai Santa Cruz – 3,362 (– 12.0%)

Why they matter:

Wow. Remember compact pickups? Ford sure does. The Maverick is off to a huge start in 2024. At this pace, it’s on track to nearly double its 2023 volume (94,058 units total — a nearly 27% production increase from 2022), which was itself the little truck’s most successful by far. There isn’t much to this segment, but its mere existence is a testament to the popularity of the pickup truck. After all, the Maverick was designed to replace Ford’s compact, economical Focus sedan and hatchback. Hyundai’s Santa Cruz sales are off a bit from 2023’s, but the Korean automaker has an updated version of the truck hitting showrooms this summer. 

Electric

Q1 2024 electric truck sales:

1. F-150 Lightning – 7,743 (+ 80.4%)
2. Rivian R1T – 3,000** ( flat )
3. Chevrolet Silverado EV – 1,061 ( new )
4. GMC Hummer EV Pickup – 830** (+ ~4,000%)
5. Tesla Cybertruck – **

Why they matter:

Electric pickups are still outliers — so much so that their manufacturers don’t group them in with their ICE model lines in their sales data. This results in a bit of a hodgepodge of a “segment,” but it exists only for the purposes of this analysis; we aren’t claiming that these trucks all directly compete with each other. Neither GMC nor Rivian break its truck/SUV sales down in its published figures, so our estimate here is based on executive comments that suggest the SUV/truck production ratio is something around 70/30 and discounting some units to account for van deliveries. Given the company’s flat performance, we should be in the ballpark with our estimate of roughly 3,000 RT1s delivered in Q1. 

We’re not surprised to see Ford in first here, but we’re surprised to see it outperforming its 2023 sales so considerably given all of the chatter regarding EV sales of late. Perhaps the demise of the battery-powered truck was somewhat overexaggerated. 

As for the Cybertruck, well, Tesla bundles it into its “other” category with the Model S sedan and Model X crossover. Together, they accounted for 17,000 units sold in Q1. Just how many of those were Cybertrucks? We have no earthly idea. 

**Unavailable or estimated at time of publication.