With the rising popularity of electric and hybrid vehicles in town, I wondered whether Wellesley’s reputation as the land of the SUV might be an unfair/outdated one.
I asked Town Hall for a car ownership list (no names) and they shared what they had. Unfortunately, though, the list only includes numbers by makes, not models. So you can’t really tell about SUVs. However, the list does at least reveal some info on Teslas, which is interesting.
Below, I’ve embedded the 2018 and 2014 lists, to give some perspective. The abbreviations for all makes might not be entirely obvious (though here’s an abbreviation guide that should help).
In 2018, the most popular makes among 21K-plus cars are Toyota, Honda, BMW, Audi and Ford. Back in 2014, the top 5 were Toyota, Honda, Ford, BMW and Mercedes. Yeah, I do seem to get cut off by more BMWs are here these days.
There’s just 1 Lamborghini in 2018 and 14 Bentleys (I recall a night a few years back at a friend’s when a guest drove there in a Bentley and everyone kept ticking him off by asking about “the Mustang”…).
How about Teslas (which one of our friends just got after a several years wait in the deposit queue)? There were 14 in 2014… and now there are 137!
I realize this is pretty basic analysis, but what do you want from a Nissan Versa driver? Do those of you more into cars than I am see any surprising or interesting changes over the past few years based on the data below?
[A bit of bonus data at the bottom from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which presented a vehicle census from 2009-2014 based on data from inspection stations. You can get a sense of the number of hybrid and electric vehicles in Wellesley and nearby communities back then. Hopefully some fresher data will roll out soon…]
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