As Rivals Pull Back, Tesla Widens Its EV Lead in US

Tesla's sales are sliding in the US—but its dominance is quietly creeping back. New data show Tesla now accounts for about 52% of US electric-vehicle sales through August, up from 43% a year earlier, even as its own sales are down 16%. The reason, per the Wall Street Journal: other automakers are pulling back faster. Overall EV sales are off 30%, and models once positioned as Tesla rivals—from the Honda Prologue to VW's ID.4 and Ford's F-150 Lightning—have been cut, capped, or are on the way out.

With its luxury Models S and X gone and the Cybertruck and future Roadster barely moving the needle, Tesla's hold increasingly rests on the Model Y SUV and its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system. Analysts say that unless battery tech leaps forward or federal rules change, the US EV story will largely be Tesla's. The automaker's story in China is markedly different, notes Yahoo Finance: Sales in the world's biggest EV market fell 12.4% in August.