- It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and the world is getting its first look at the 2024 Ram 1500 REV. This upcoming electric truck is another sign that the segment is changing.
- A host of plug-in pickups are on their way to join the fossil fuel classics, amid statistics showing that nearly 80 percent of new vehicle purchases are trucks and SUVs.
- New trucks need new truck buyers, and it turns out that today’s truck buyer demographic is expanding to include more women and young people.
One of this year’s Super Bowl car commercials was Ram’s big reveal of the upcoming 2024 Ram 1500 REV. Electric vehicle commercials have been the focus of the Super Bowl for the past few years, so it makes sense that an all-truck brand like Ram would use the big-game attention to promote the first of an entire lineup of electric models.
For many car buyers in the US, electric trucks represent a somewhat contradictory combination. Pickups are very popular, but EV technology is still finding its way into mainstream sales. Electric trucks may be the solution.
Truck Sales Remain Strong in 2022
Three of the five best-selling vehicles in the US last year were trucks: the Ford F-series, the Chevy Silverado, and the Ram pickup. Ford never tires of telling the world that the F-150 has been America’s best-selling truck for the past million years. And a quick glance at the sales figures reveals how many more trucks Ford sells than any other model. In 2022, for example, Ford will sell 653,957 F-series trucks, according to data from Automotive News Data center. Ford’s second best-selling model last year was the Explorer, which sold 207,673 units.
Chevy sold 513,354 Silverados in 2022, and its position follows the same trend as at Ford. The Equinox SUV was second in Chevy, with 212,072 sales last year. Ram, which otherwise sells only the ProMaster and cargo vans, sold 468,344 pickups, the bulk of its 529,280 total sales for the year.
Who Bought All These Trucks?
Aside from some F-150 Lightning models, all of the best-selling pickup trucks sold last year were powered by fossil fuels. A growing list of new electric pickup models in the works from Chevy, Ram, Tesla, and others means it’s no secret that change is coming to this market segment.
But another shift is occurring in the demographics of the truck-buying world. CBS News noted that the number of women interested in driving pickup trucks continues to increase, and JD Power found at the end of 2021 that millennials bought the most pickup trucks in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The trend line shows that this interest has not subsided in several years. As CBS points out, you can’t be a top-selling vehicle if you only appeal to a limited number of people.
Chevrolet Silverado EV and Silverado 1500.
What’s next?
Although the two segments are unfortunately lumped together, JD Power recently released a report predicting that trucks and SUVs accounted for nearly 80 percent of all new vehicle retail sales in January.
The outline of the truck market will remain the same in 2023, and the two main facts mentioned above imply that we will probably see more trucks on the road soon. Exciting new electric models and technologies are coming to the pickup world—where fancier and fancier trucks have become the norm in recent years—and this will encourage people who have never considered trucks before to give them a second look.
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