California is farther ahead on the road to electric vehicle adoption than it anticipated a decade ago.
Governor Gavin Newsom last week announced that the state had passed a cumulative 1.5 million cumulative plug-in vehicle sales. That’s two years ahead of a goal set by previous California Governor Jerry Brown, aiming to hit that number by 2025.
The tally comes from the California Energy Commission, which last week updated its numbers through the first quarter. The CEC reported that cumulative sales for battery electric, plug-in hybrid, and fuel-cell EVs combined stands at nearly 1.524 million, while battery electric vehicles themselves, the largest portion of that by far, are at about 1,051,000 million.
So far this year, 21.2% of new vehicles sold in California were ZEVs—meaning primarily EVs and plug-in hybrids combined. Looking only at battery electric sales, EVs add up to about 16% of the light-duty new-vehicle market.
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Tesla charging
Nationwide, as the Department of Energy recently summed, comparable plug-in vehicle sales including EVs and PHEVs added up to around 7% for 2022, with EV s ales at 5.6%.