Electric vehicle giant Tesla dominated the US luxury car market in 2022, ultimately overthrowing the German automaker BMW. Experian’s latest data, via Automotive News, revealed that Tesla recorded a year-on-year registration growth of 41% to 484,351 in 2022, while rivals saw sales decline.
For comparison, BMW had a YoY drop in sales of 5.3% to 327,929 units in terms of new registrations. Another major competitor Mercedes-Benz only had 269,511 new registrations, which is almost similar to its 2021 performance.
BMW was substantially dethroned by Tesla, which outsold the German automaker by a whopping 156,422 units.
Tesla leads the US luxury car segment against 15 other brands
The data revealed that 15 US luxury brands recorded a YoY registrations decline of 3.5% to 2.18 million units. Meanwhile, the decline would be 11% if Tesla is excluded from the calculation.
Top luxury brands in the US in 2022
| Ranking | Brand | New registrations & Changes |
| 1 | Tesla | 484,351, up 41% |
| 2 | BMW | 327,929, down 5.3% |
| 3 | Mercedes-Benz | 269,511 |
| 4 | Lexus | 260,668, down 16% |
| 5 | Audi | 184,279, down 8.7% |
| 6 | Cadillac | 133,521, up 6.5% |
| 7 | Acura | 101,345, down 36% |
| 8 | Volvo | 97,744, down 21% |
| 9 | Lincoln | 81,813, down 10% |
| 10 | Porsche | 64,610, down 5.4% |
The bottom five that complete the top 15 are the following brands: Land Rover, Genesis, Infiniti, Alfa Romeo, and Jaguar. Unfortunately, the report has not included the new registration data for these automakers.
As you can see in the table above, Tesla’s competitors all saw an unfortunate sales decline in terms of new registrations in 2022 from a year ago. Cadillac was the only brand to record a sales increase apart from Tesla, with a slight growth of 6.5%.
With these results, Tesla successfully topped the luxury market for the first time, and it did so without the aid of any products powered by gasoline engines. It marks another milestone for the Musk-led automaker, progressively advancing in the industry despite setbacks.
