After narrowly missing out on overtaking luxury leader BMW in new-vehicle registrations for 2021, Tesla began this year in the segment's No. 1 spot, according to data from Experian.
The January pull-ahead may reflect what's to come this calendar year since Tesla is on the verge of unleashing significant new U.S. production capacity in the weeks ahead.
Tesla was already on a sharp trajectory to overtake BMW late last year. The electric vehicle maker's January registrations rose 49 percent from a year earlier to 37,162, Experian reported, while BMW registrations rose 8.2 percent to 30,563.