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The HybridCars.com monthly sales dashboard is a collaboration of HybridCars.com and Baum & Associates, a Michigan-based market research firm focusing on automotive issues including the hybrid and electric vehicle market.

Overall U.S. passenger vehicle sales were reduced in January due to the weather and the same can be said of alternative vehicles as well.

Speaking of plug-in cars, these took a hit last month with numbers for the top three down significantly – except for Tesla which was down less than Chevrolet and Nissan’s plug-ins.

Reasons include 1) Cold weather and winter precipitation put a chilling effect on new car sales. 2) Gas prices remained relatively low and people who tend to react to pump prices in their car buying preferences passed on plug-ins last month. 3) Given tax incentives associated with these vehicles, many buyers worked to ensure they completed their purchase in December so that they could claim the tax benefit sooner rather than later.

While there is some controversy about the impact of cold weather on vehicle range (some vehicles do better than others), one would expect that some buyers were discouraged by the cold weather across much of the country.

We of course continue to estimate Tesla sales and while production is up (600 a week), there was downtime due to the holidays and U.S. sales are affected by volume being shipped to both Europe and Asia.

Given the backlog of orders, full production at 600 per week (and no vacation weeks) will lead to higher sales going forward.

Chevy Volt sales are also affected by low inventories, but as reported here earlier, it appears GM is less interested in increasing production to allow for greater sales.

The same cannot be said for the Nissan Leaf and we expect sales of this vehicle will continue to improve as supplier and manufacturing concerns have been solved.

Plug in vehicle share in January was higher than January 2013, but at the lowest level since July 2013. The overall share of plug-ins of 0.59 percent exceeded the 0.45 percent achieved in January 2013, and matched the total for 2013 of 0.62 percent.

Hybrid sales were down 25 percent from December 2013, which was in line with the drop in overall sales. However, as compared to January 2013, hybrid sales were down 22 percent, which was well below the 3 percent drop in total sales. Toyota’s hybrid sales (64 percent of total hybrid sales) were of course a major factor in this drop, with all versions of the Prius and Camry down significantly from year ago.

Ford’s Fusion and C-Max hybrids were also well below last year’s results, which continues to be true given the mileage restatement that has hurt these vehicles for several months.

The Hyundai Sonata and Lexus CT200h hybrids each enjoyed increases from last January, as did the Lincoln MKZ (which was unavailable due to changeover a year ago).

The overall share of hybrids of 2.7 percent trailed the 3.3 percent achieved in January 2013, as well as the total for 2013 of 3.2 percent.

Diesel volume declined in line with the market from December, but increased from year-ago levels, both in terms of volume and share. While volumes of the Jetta and Passat declined from year-ago, diesels not in the market a year ago (such as the BMW 3-Series and 5-Series, Audi A6 and Q5, and Chevrolet Cruze) led to an overall increase.