General Motors reported a 5.5% year-over-year decline in U.S. sales for the third quarter, selling 670,974 new vehicles, the Detroit automaker said Thursday.
Sales of GM’s all-electric vehicles fell across its entire lineup, according to the company, as consumer enthusiasm for EVs weakens. Demand had surged a year earlier, before the Trump administration ended up to $7,500 in federal incentives for electric vehicle purchases, and GM reported record EV sales in that comparable period.
Measured against those figures, the most recent quarter brought steep declines: the Equinox EV dropped 92.4% to 1,905 units, the Blazer EV fell 84.4% and Hummer EV sales slid 72.9%.
Despite a broad EV portfolio, GM offers only a single hybrid model, a Corvette. Experts cited by CNBC expect that gap in the hybrid segment to weigh on the company’s overall sales.
Cox Automotive said last week that new vehicle sales have outpaced expectations this year and raised its 2026 forecast by roughly 2%, to 16.1 million units. The firm also expects hybrids to capture a growing share of the market as elevated gas prices pressure consumers.
Toyota Motor outperformed GM in the quarter, helped by its electrified offerings. The Japanese automaker said sales rose 0.6% to 633,223 vehicles, while sales of electrified vehicles including hybrids climbed 28.5% to 363,367 units — more than 57% of its total.
That performance narrowed Toyota’s gap with U.S. sales leader GM to less than 136,000 units, compared with a full-year gap of about 335,000 units last year. Cox Automotive said earlier this year that if such trends hold, Toyota could retake the U.S. sales lead in the coming years.
Honda Motor, which also sells several hybrids and leads major automakers in U.S. fuel economy, reported a 9.3% increase in third-quarter U.S. sales, with hybrid volume setting a record above 106,000 units.
“We’ve got really high demand for hybrids,” Lance Woelfer, head of American Honda Motor’s U.S. sales, told CNBC. “We’re finding more and more consumers are figuring out hybrids meet their needs.”
High fuel prices — an AAA national average of $4.41 — were also expected to weigh on sales of the large trucks and SUVs that GM relies on. GM’s full-size pickups were roughly flat, the company said.
Every GM brand is down year to date, with Cadillac leading the decline at 25%. Lower-cost models were a bright spot amid high inflation: the Chevrolet Trailblazer rose 51% in the quarter, the Buick Envista gained 18.4% and the Chevrolet Trax added 16.3%.
GM said sales of vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines were about level with a year earlier. Duncan Aldred, president of GM North America, struck an optimistic tone despite the overall decline.
“Our business is performing very well, the launch of our next-generation full-size pickup trucks is on track, and we are making investments in new vehicles, innovative technologies, and our U.S. manufacturing footprint to drive our next phase of growth,” Aldred said in a statement.
Last month GM released additional details about new V-8 engines for its pickup trucks as it works to hold its lead in truck sales. Other automakers also reported U.S. third-quarter vehicle sales on Thursday.
Correction: Duncan Aldred is president of GM North America. An earlier version of this story misstated his title.
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