According to Bloomberg News, Electric vehicle (EVs) sales in the United States are achieving remarkable milestones.
During the first half of 2023, the market share of EVs surpassed 7%, which marks a pivotal moment for widespread adoption. Total EV sales also recently surpassed 3 million units. Yet the most striking achievement is that nearly 1 million new EVs are being added each year. In the year leading up to this past June, Americans purchased a staggering 977,445 pure electric vehicles.
The journey to this milestone has been astonishingly quick, with the U.S. taking a decade to sell the first million fully electric vehicles, just two years to reach the second million, and slightly over a year to attain the third. With the latest quarterly data soon to be tallied, the country appears well on its way to achieving a fourth million.
A different perspective on the pace of EV adoption is to consider 12-month rolling sales figures, which offer insights into the ongoing trends by smoothing out seasonal fluctuations. The only period of decline in 12-month EV sales occurred briefly from the third quarter of 2019. During this period, Tesla temporarily directed a significant portion of its American-made Model 3 vehicles overseas for international sales, coinciding with the early stages of the pandemic.
The story of EV adoption in the U.S. has primarily revolved around two key players: California and Tesla. California emerged as the first top-10 global auto market to cross the critical 5% threshold in new car sales for EVs. Recently, Tesla outperformed Toyota to become the leading vehicle brand in the state, regardless of whether the vehicles are electric or conventional.
For EVs to truly become mainstream across the entire United States and for the traditional Detroit auto industry to thrive through this transition, EV markets need to expand geographically. This shift is underway, with states like Texas, Florida, Washington, and New Jersey gradually eroding California’s share of the U.S. EV market. Nonetheless, Tesla continues to dominate, accounting for a substantial 61% of all EVs ever sold in the U.S.
When considering all vehicles equipped with a plug (adding in plug-in hybrids), it appears that Americans are already purchasing 1 million EVs approximately every nine months
