In August 1 out of 10 (9.90%) new vehicles purchased in the state of California were EVs (PHEVs + BEVs), according to the latest numbers from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers Advanced Technology Vehicle Sales Dashboard (information provided by IHS Market).
While this is the highest market share for EVs ever in California, the month of September should be much higher due to high sales deliveries of the Tesla Model 3. Doing some estimating using sales numbers from the InsideEVs Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard, September could come in around 12% for California.
Year-to-date (January through August), California’s EV sales market share stood at 7.07%, nearly double that of the state of Washington at 3.65% and 4.3 times the US total of 1.66%.
For the month of August, after California other top states (and DC) for EV sales market share include Oregon (4.12%), Washington (3.54%), District of Columbia (3.40%), Hawaii (2.69%) and Colorado and Arizona (2.46%). The total US market share stood at 2.24% for the month.
View Updated Sortable State-by-State
EV Sales Market Share Table for August
The bottom 5 states were West Virginia (0.17%), Oklahoma 0.20%), Mississippi (0.28%), North Dakota (0.29%) and Louisiana (0.33%). On a percent basis, Californian’s purchased EVs in August at a rate of 58.2 time greater than West Virginia.
For the total year for 2018, the US EV sales market share will likely come close to 2.50% and California should end up between 7.5% to 8%. However, the last 3 months of 2018 for California should average above 10%. At this rate, California could “cross the EV chasm” (16% of new vehicle sales) by the end of 2020.
California has long accounted for roughly 50% of all US EV sales and that trend continued, rising to 53% in August. A key question for the next few years is: Will California’s appetite for electric vehicles continue to increase and grab an even larger share of EV sales, or will the other 49 states and District of Columbia start to significantly grow their share of overall US EV sales?
