Hybrids vs Trucks. Comparing sales over the last decade.
by mkruzeniski. Average Reading Time: about 4 minutes.
In October, Toyota announced that it had sold over two million Prius hybrids globally since it introduced the vehicle in 1997. Remarking on the announcement, Jalopnik (an automotive blog owned by Gawker) compared the Prius sales to U.S. truck sales during the same period. Even though the comparison was between Prius global sales and truck sales only in the United States, as you might expect, the truck sales beat Prius sales by a considerable amount - about 17x.
However, a few things were odd about Jalopnik’s use of data: First, comparing a single vehicle against an entire vehicle category. Second, comparing global sales against U.S. sales. Third, comparing cumulative sales from 1997-2010, since the Prius was only introduced to the United States in 2000, while trucks were an already existing, well established and popular vehicle category with a long head start. While the data isn’t wrong, it tells a misleading and incomplete story. Since Trucks and Hybrids carry a certain cultural symbolism in the United States, I was curious about the full data behind these categories. I felt that there would be some better ways normalize and express the information for a fairer comparison of the categories, and to see if there were any emerging trends that would become visible. I spent some time digging in to the sources that Jalopnik linked to in their post, and found some others to piece together information that was missing (all sources are listed at the bottom of this post).
Since 2010 isn’t over yet, and since Hybrid vehicles weren’t introduced to the United States until 1999 (the Honda Insight), I focused on 1999 to 2009 instead of 2007-2010. I also focused on U.S. sales instead of global sales. Above to the left (in red) is the information graphic that Jalopnik posted to compare the Prius against trucks. To the right is a normalized version, comparing all cumulative Hybrid sales in the U.S. against cumulative Truck sales in the U.S. From both charts, it would still appear that Hybrids are really far behind.
But that makes sense; only 17 hybrid vehicles (the Honda Insight) were sold in the United States in 1999. I thought it would be more telling to look at year over year sales over the period of 1999 through 2009, instead of the total cumulative sales, to see the rate of growth and/or decline in the Truck and Hybrid categories. In addition to the category comparison, I also overlaid the sales for the most popular vehicle in each of the two categories: the Ford F-Series and the Toyota Prius. For some cultural context, I included the average gas prices, and the Dow Jones and NASDAQ indexes from that period. Since we’ve gone through two recessions over the past ten years, I wondered how the category purchasing trends related to trends in the economy.
A story starts to appear. Even though trucks sales do still far outnumber Hybrid sales (and the cumulative total means there are far more trucks on the road than hybrids), we can see that both categories show significant purchase trends. Yearly truck sales have decreased by 57% since 2009, or, an average of -8.2% every year. In the same period, Hybrid sales in the United States have increased by an impressive 1,707,376%, or 165% each year. As the trends relate to the economy, neither category was affected much by the dot-bust recession from 2000-2002. Both categories show significant trending from 2003-2007, during which the U.S. average gas price rose sharply. During the recession of the last two years (during which gas prices dropped), Hybrids purchasing leveled off, while Truck purchases dropped drastically.
To concentrate on the significant change in purchases in the last decade, I made another graphic that focuses on just 1999 and 2009. I also looked in to the percentage of total vehicle market share for the two categories. The relative vehicle market share of trucks has decreased by 3%, down to 16% of the total market. Hybrids have grown from 0.0001% of the market in 1999, to 2.8% in 2009.
So what does all this mean? While the original Jalopnik data makes it clear that there are far more trucks on the road in the United States (and likely will be for a long time), the number of Hybrids being purchased every year is increasing rapidly, while the number of Trucks being purchased in the U.S. has declined considerably. If both trends were to continue at their current rates, the number of Hybrids and Trucks purchased would be equal by 2016. As gas prices have started to rise again over the last couple years and as more Electric and Hybrid vehicle models are made available, the iconic Truck may not be the most popular vehicle in the U.S.A. for much longer.
Full disclosure, I am a Prius owner. The purpose of this post is purely to get a more accurate picture of truck vs hybrid buying trends in the U.S., not to debate the relative fuel-efficiency, cost, or environmental merits between Trucks and Hybrids.
Sources:
http://jalopnik.com/5658032/putting-prius-sales-in-perspective
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_electric_vehicles_in_the_United_States
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2009/01/2008-year-end-t.html
http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=70259&vf=26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_F-Series
http://trucks.about.com/od/makesandmodels/a/2009-pickup-truck-sales.htm
http://www.hybridcars.com/hybrid-sales-dashboard/december-2009-dashboard.html
http://www.eia.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_history.html
http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI
thanks for this more accurate picture. Another factor to consider is that the first few hybrid vehicles were butt-ugly. It’s only been in the past few years that they were actually acceptable to drive from a “I’m proud of how my car looks” perspective. In fact, the ugliness of hybrid vehicles was a minor subplot of the awful 2005 film Be Cool.
Yearly truck sales have decreased by 57% since 2009, or, an average of -8.2% every year.
The rest of my comment got lost. I think you meant 1999 instead of 2009.And also, my compliment was lost – good stuff.
wow. beautiful presentation. thank you.
How do hybrid trucks figure into all this? Are they counted in both graphs? Realize that only figures in the last couple of years…
The implication is that hybrids are taking the truck market share. But there are other types of vehicles, and some types (such as “cross-overs”) have become more popular from 99-09 as well. I think rising gas prices over that period made a lot of SUV owners realize that they didn’t need a truck per se, but that they would be happy with a “tall car” (cross-over or “minivan-that’s-not-a-minivan).
oh that’s a great graphic!but i don’t think it tells the truck story quite right. pickup sales collapsed w/ the building sector, not mainly due to gas prices or general household wealth loss. you can see them leading the bust in 2006 as hot money left real estate.housing starts chart: http://calculatedriskimages.blogspot.com/2010/05/housing-starts-by-intent-q1-…
Mike this is great work!Thank you.Bwalls:Current hybrid American trucks are not environmentally sound, or created for fuel economy’s sake.They are generally engineered to use the great torque improvements of electric engines.They also consume the same or more oil then their non hybrid counterparts.I am assuming that SUV hybrids like the explorer hybrid is lumped to the hybrid car category. (large suv hybrids again are a joke not worth counting as hybrids– suburban I am looking at you.)Not to sound mean, but.American Trucks of the past 14 years have not been lookers.I would even venture to say that Ram trucks and gm/ford large suvs have been some of the most ridiculously ugly designs on the road.(excluding the current generation ford and Chevy trucks)
I’m curious to see how mainstream EVs like the Nissan Leaf will factor into this. Will they consume more hybrid sales, or are there more people holding off on hybrids – most of which are essentially underpowered ICE vehicles with a fuel-efficiency modification – because they want to see real, powerful EVs come to market that aren’t dragging around all that junk (gas engine, exhaust, etc.)? While I prefer not to drive, if I had to I would prefer something all-electric myself.
You’re missing an incredibly important driver of truck sales in the U.S. in your analysis. Truck sales are directly linked to the construction market. Both large and small construction companies purchase trucks in direct correlation to the health of the industry. Both residential and private commercial construction has been in a free fall in the U.S. since the latter part of 2007. As construction workers were laid off and large companies began liquidating their fleet trucks, new truck sales fell off a cliff. Your article, while much more informative then the Jalopnik original, seeks to identify a correlation between the drop in truck purchases and the increase in hybrid purchases without considering much more likely external influences. Here in Florida there are an estimated 400,000 construction workers that are unemployed. Most of them drive trucks. None of them that I know drive hybrids. As an active member in the industry, I can assure you that most of them are waiting for the construction market to recover before they consider a new truck. I haven’t met the first one interested in hybrid. Until hybrids can tow and carry large payloads while still generating the fuel efficiency gains they show for casual around town driving, trucks will still claim a huge share of new vehicle sales in the U.S. once the economy returns to a more stable footing. That said, awesome job with the charts. They were easy to read and analyze.
Hi Mike, sorry to post off-topic – but the Typekit fonts used on this site make the text impossible for me to read. I like the infographics, and would like to read the accompanying text but it is so light and the leading so tight that it all just smooshes into a very light grey blob.
Great graphics, research, and the fonts look wonderful on Safari.Funnily enough, Ford F-series are up 29% on the first 10 months of 2010 vs. same period 2009. Likewise SUVs up 22%, and cross-overs up 17% vs. same period.Prius? Down 2% vs. same period 2009.Ouch. Man. That’s gotta hurt.
I think another point not mentioned here is that there are many more fuel efficient vehicles, not just Priuses. There are other brands of Hybrids, Amwrican Hybrids, newer fuel efficient vehicles that are diesel or use other ways to conserve fuel, many of them not hybrid at all. I think looking at the slight decline of Priuses shows that there are more options now in fuel efficiency rather than a drop in sales of fuel efficient vehicles.
Cool statistical views, Mike. Your correlating to other trends is interesting. I would point out another important enabler: tax subsidies. I bet the majority of trucks are business write-offs, and Prius and other hybrids were definitely spiked by tax benefits in the last couple years (though, I think, they expired already).(And, yes, your web font choices are beautiful. Looks great in Opera 11b.)
I suspect that the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf (and to a much lesser extent the Toyota plug-in Prius) have created some overhang in the market for hybrids. The Volts have started rolling out to the consumer market and the Leaf is close to doing the same. It will be interesting to see how this affects the market.(Very interesting article in a couple of different ways. Thanks for putting the work into it!)
@xdr, Let alone the smartcar, the civic hybrid, the tesla, the Ford fusion, Mercury Milan, the new Jetta, Golf, etc. etc…I think this article misses pointing out that the ONLY reason the Prius has really gone down, is that fetr 10 years it finally, in the last 2 years, has competition n fuel efficiency! If we were to look at fuel efficient cars rather than just plain hybrids, you’d see a much different chart.While the Prius may be at the top of the chart for efficiency, there are many new cars coming close!
> Hi Mike, sorry to post off-topic – but the Typekit fonts used on> this site make the text impossible for me to read.It’s not TypeKit or the fonts, it’s your browser, and it’s your responsibility to fix it, not Mike’s.
Thanks everyone for all the comments and feedback. I definitely wasn’t expecting so many visits today. There’s definitely a number of variables that play a role in trends like this and I realize that some other, like the housing and construction markets or tax subsidies, that I could have considered better. Bringing in fuel and the Dow/NASDAQ numbers was an attempt at representing and relating some of those broader social and economic drivers. There are a couple other problems with the way I worked with the data that some of you pointed out:First, though it was my intention to narrow in on 1999-2009 because the data from 2010 was very incomplete when I started this project, I regret not including it now. As V Smith points out in his comment, Truck sales are back up considerably in 2010 compared to 2009, and Hybrid sales are back down slightly. The increase in Truck sales can probably be tied to the fact that we’re coming out of the recession more strongly this year, and gas prices are relatively low (through trending up). Ray Wert, the author of the Jalopnik post emailed me and made an interesting point about the Truck market: “Keep in mind that there is an elasticity to the demand on hybrids based on fuel prices, but many of the “recreation” buyers of pickup trucks are now, due to those same price elasticity concerns, out of the pickup truck market. Therefore, the majority of the remainder of pickup truck owners are buying based on need, not desire and thus, much less elastic. I wouldn’t expect those sales numbers on pickups to drop much further.”That would suggest that 2009 was exceptionally low year and Truck purchases will pick back up, but probably not to levels seen in 2005 and earlier. I think he is correct that there has been an elasticity in the Hybrid market based on fuel prices, I do believe that as more (and better looking) Hybrid models become available, Hybrids will become a natural choice for consumers no matter what fuel prices are (I can’t prove this in any way though). As for the recent drop in Prius/Hybrid purchases, I believe that the Prius recalls probably plays a large role in the trend. Second, there are Trucks that are Hybrids, and Hybrids that are Trucks. This means that some of the numbers in each category overlap, and I did not correct for this as I wasn’t confident about how to properly separate them out. Third, how to count EV’s? I didn’t include them in the Hybrid category for simplicity sake. However, I think the most interesting fuel-efficient vehicles coming in to the market now and in the coming years are EV’s, not Hybrids. If I update this chart in 5 years’ time, I would probably lump them together in to one “low-emissions” category. Instead of suggesting that Hybrids will continue to trend upwards in the coming years, I should have said that I believe Hybrids+EV’s as a category will trend up. Hybrids on their own will probably drop off if EV’s take off in a way that I hope they do. @raafi – You’re right. I originally found the Jalopnik post from a link that a friend had posted on Facebook, with the comment that it’s “time for Hybrids to look more desirable”. @bwalls – I used truck sales data and hybrid sales data, so yes, they end up being counted in both graphs. Not ideal, I know.@clawsout – Sorry that it’s not looking good for you. I redesigned the site just this week actually. I’ll try testing in more browsers, but it sounds like its working for most others. @Eytan – Agreed. A friend of mine in Germany mentioned to me that Hybrids have been slow to take off since they still don’t beat Diesels for mileage, price, and lifetime CO2 emissions. A broader comparison of trends across more vehicle types would be interesting. In the future I would like to look at the numbers for these same categories globally, but it’s been difficult to find good data unfortunately. I’ll also be keeping an eye on EV sales. I had fun putting this together and I appreciate the compliments.Thanks again!
While I don’t understand America’s fascination with Trucks (and truck based SUV’s) a worry that the current Hybrids if sold in goring quantities do not pose a big environmental threat of what to do with all those dead highly toxic batteries they are un stable and contain lots of rare earth elements. The demand for these has been growing with the explosion of portable electronic devices but cars use massive amounts of these. Turning our dependance from oil form the mid-east to blood minerals from Africa is not a good thing.We all really need to be pushing our government to to higher gas taxes to make all alternative energy more viable and keep pushing for fuel cell or other zero emissions cars.
Ken, I believe that proper recycling of those batteries can recycle them into equivalent batteries, and that can be done several times. They should really mandate that. Once you separate and recombine the components, very little new material if any needs to be added to get the same life span out of them again!
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