- 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 flock of plug-in pickup trucks is on its way to join the fossil fuel classic, amid statistics showing that nearly 80 percent of new vehicle purchases are trucks and SUVs.
- New trucks need new truck buyers, and it appears that the demographics of today’s truck buyers are expanding to include more women and younger people.
One of the marquees of the Super Bowl car commercials this year is Ram’s big reveal of its upcoming all-electric 2024 Ram 1500 REV. Electric vehicle commercials have been Super Bowl highlights for the past few years, so it makes sense that an all-truck brand like Ram would use the attention from the big game to launch the first of what will be an entire line of electric models. , to promote.
For many car buyers in the US, electric trucks represent a somewhat contradictory combination. Pickup trucks are extremely popular, but EV technology is still searching for a path to mainstream sales. Electric trucks may be the solution.
Truck sales remained strong in 2022
Three of the five best-selling vehicles in the US last year were trucks: Ford F-Series, Chevy Silverado, and Ram pickup. Ford never gets tired of telling the world that the F-150 has been the best selling truck in America for the past million years. And a look at the sales numbers shows just how many more trucks Ford sells than other models. In 2022, for example, Ford sold 653,957 F-Series trucks, according to data from the Car news data center. Ford’s second-biggest-selling model last year was the Explorer, which sold 207,673 units.
Chevy sold 513,354 Silverados in 2022, and the rankings follow a similar trend to Ford. The Equinox SUV came in second to Chevy, with 212,072 sales last year. Ram, which otherwise only sells the ProMaster and trucks, sold 468,344 pickups, the bulk of its 529,280 overall sales for the year.
Who is buying all these trucks?
Aside from a few F-150 Lightning models, all of those top-selling pickup trucks sold last year were powered by fossil fuels. The growing list of new electric pickup models in the works from Chevy, Ram, Tesla and others means it’s no secret that changes are coming to this segment of the market.
But another shift is occurring in the demographics of the truck buying world. CBS News notes that the number of women interested in driving a pickup truck continues to grow, 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 this interest has not decreased in the intervening years. As CBS noted, you can’t be a best-selling vehicle if you only appeal to a limited number of people.
Chevrolet Silverado EV and Silverado 1500.
What’s next?
While the two segments are unfortunately conflated, JD Power recently released a report that predicted that trucks and SUVs accounted for nearly 80 percent of all retail sales of new vehicles in January.
The rough outlines of the truck market will remain the same in 2023, and the two main facts mentioned above suggest that we will likely see even more trucks on the road soon. Exciting new electric models and technology are coming to the pickup world – where flashier and fancier trucks have been the norm in recent years – and will encourage people who have never considered a truck before to give them a second look.
