Cadillac Electric Car Prospects Fail

Now electric vehicles (EV) of any variety, from the Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) hybrid Prius to the all-electric Model S sedan from Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), account for about 3.4% of total 2014 year-to-date sales of 5.1 million vehicles. The EVs have sold a total of 172,363 through April. Among the plug-in hybrids, the best-seller is GM’s Chevy Volt with year-to-date sales of 5,154.

The MSRP on a Cadillac ELR is $75,995, which may be another reason for the anemic sales. GM is trying to help sales along by offering dealers (not buyers) a $5,000 incentive to offer customers a test drive in the ELR. Dealers have until June 2 to designate the ELRs currently in their inventory that will be used as test-drive vehicles, and then each of those vehicles will have to log 750 test drive miles to get the incentive payment.

At the current sales rate of about 60 cars a month, Cadillac dealers have 725-day supply of ELRs in inventory. The vehicle does not appear to be a significant threat to the Tesla Model S or even the Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid, which has sold 341 vehicles so far in 2014 at a list price of $113,000.

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