By Sam Boughedda
Citi analyst Itay Michaeli told analysts in a note Friday that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) continues to dominate EV “mindshare,” but the trend is declining.
In a note focused on electric vehicles and "mindshare," which is a tracker based on Citi's latest analysis of web-traffic data across various EV brands/products through the end of May, Michaeli said traditional market share metrics don’t currently paint a complete picture due to numerous constraints.
However, by analyzing web-traffic data, the firm's goal is to build a “mindshare” tracker as a potential leading indicator of future EV volume share.
"Recent website traffic data (measuring total visits) across several EV automakers/brands suggests a modest slowdown in aggregate traffic, with May at ~2% below peak levels," wrote Michaeli. Though the decline isn’t severe and comes off very strong growth in recent years, the data does suggest that macro/inflation pressures could be weighing a bit on consumer engagement. Looking at the May data across individual companies (in comparison to Sept ’21-Feb’22), we saw very mixed outcomes across the board."
Citi's mindshare tracker shows that Tesla continues to dominate mindshare, but mass-market/lower-priced luxury players (i.e., Hyundai, Kia, VW) and companies launching new products fared better than some of the premium players.
"Again, the data is mixed, but we do generally view margins in the ~$60k+ part of the U.S. market as somewhat more vulnerable to macro pressures given the amount of incremental capacity being added in what is an est. market size of only several hundred thousand units, though gas prices could provide some offset by accelerating luxury EV adoption."