Tesla might be the plucky upstart in the automotive world, especially against heavyweights such as Mercedes-Benz’s parent company Daimler and the BMW Group, but in North America, the Californian EV maker sold more Model S’ than Benz did the S-Class and Bimmer the 7 Series.
The Model S’s high price puts it in the same class as those two other esteemed cars, but Tesla would hesitate to call their saloon a luxury car in quite the same way. Nonetheless, its popularity in Q3 2016 has resulted in it beating sales numbers of its two closest contenders combined, as Bloomberg confirms.
To be exact, the report specifies that 9,156 units of the Model S were sold in Q3, while the Mercedes-Benz moved 3,138 S-Classes and BMW managing 3,634 units of their fresh 7 Series.
To add salt to the wound of the side of internal combustion, it appears that every other major luxury automaker had experienced a sales decrease over that same period.
A Tesla spokesperson told Digital Trends: “Our Q3 delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative, as we only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct.”
Zooming out from North America, Tesla says that the sales Model S in Q3 2016 is nearly 16,000 units while the Model X also had positive growth in sales with 8,700 deliveries.
It’s seems to be a high time for the now-eminent EV maker. A new and more powerful version of the Model X, the P100D, was recently released along with a much improved Autopilot semi-autonomous driving suite.
Between now late 2017, Tesla plans to ramp up production to an unprecedented capacity with the construction of their new Gigafactory to meet demand for its newest model, the more affordable Model 3 with its 400,000 pre-orders so far. Tesla expects to produce 100,000 vehicles a year.
For more on Tesla vehicles, including pricing and specifications, check out our Showroom.
