Electric vehicle market and policy developments in U.S. states, 2023

In 2023, sales of new electric light-duty vehicles in the United States reached about 1.4 million, up from nearly 1 million in 2022, resulting in a sales share of about 9%. Across the country, the electric vehicle market has grown at different rates in different states. This market spotlight summarizes key metrics related to electric vehicle market growth at the state level through 2023, including annual sales and sales shares, charging infrastructure deployment, state purchase incentives, and model availability.

Figure 1 summarizes electric vehicle (EV) uptake (both battery-electric and plug-in hybrid), charging infrastructure deployment, battery-electric vehicle (BEV) purchase incentives, and EV model availability in 2023 in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, ordered from highest to lowest EV sales share. Markets categorized as “ZEV states” (solid bars) have adopted California’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) regulations, while those marked as “non-ZEV states” (hashed bars) have not. As of the end of 2023, 17 states and the District of Columbia had adopted California’s ZEV regulations. As shown in the figure, 15 of the 20 markets with the highest electric vehicle sales shares in 2023 were all ZEV states. The top 10 markets (nine states and the District of Columbia) also had EV sales shares greater than 11% and are all ZEV states.

Figure 1. Electric vehicle sales share, charging infrastructure deployment, purchase incentives, and model availability in U.S. states and the District of Columbia, 2023

Areas with high EV sales shares tended to have a high concentration of public and workplace chargers. The 10 markets with the highest EV sales share had close to 980 public and workplace chargers per million residents, on average. All ZEV states had close to 780 chargers per million residents on average, while non-ZEV states had around 320. The top 10 markets with the highest number of chargers per million residents in 2023—California, the District of Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maine—have all implemented ZEV regulations. These markets also had more than 2 times as many chargers per million residents compared to the non-ZEV state average.

Figure 1 also shows that most ZEV states offered purchase incentives for BEVs, whereas non-ZEV states did not. The 10 markets with the highest EV sales shares have all adopted ZEV regulations, and nine offered BEV purchase incentives. Four of these markets also offered additional purchase incentives to low-income consumers. Fourteen of the 18 markets with ZEV regulations offered BEV purchase incentives with an average value of around $2,000. Three of the 33 non-ZEV states (Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Texas) offered purchase incentives in 2023 but these programs made only 500 to 3,000 rebates available, despite these markets being among the largest in terms of total light-duty vehicle (LDV) sales. Thus, the incentives for these three states are not shown in the figure.

The connection of ZEV regulations and model availability follows a similar trend. All ZEV states had, on average, 60 models available compared to 46 models in non-ZEV states. Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between state-level model availability and EV uptake for the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The bubble size is proportional to the 2023 new electric vehicle sales in each state, and the color indicates ZEV states (green) and non-ZEV states (purple). The figure shows that states with the highest number of EV models tended to have the highest EV sales and sales shares. Two thirds of ZEV states had 60 or more models available and sales shares of 7% or greater. Six of the top 10 markets by EV sales (California, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado, Massachusetts), representing about 50% of U.S. electric vehicle sales, are ZEV states with 74 or more models available. The states with the fewest models available tended to have comparatively fewer EV sales and lower sales shares.

There are some exceptions to the relationships observed between ZEV regulation adoption, EV model availability, and high EV sales. Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Illinois are non-ZEV states with relatively high EV model availability. These four states are among the top six largest LDV markets in the country in terms of annual sales, and therefore are more likely to have more models available compared to states with lower annual sales. The LDV markets in these states were 11 to 22 times larger than those of Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and they had about twice the number of EV models available. Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maine, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Vermont have adopted ZEV regulations but model availability in these states is close to the average of all states. The LDV markets in these states are relatively small and thus are more likely to have fewer EV models available than states with relatively higher populations and total LDV sales. However, compared to EV model availability in non-ZEV states with similar total LDV sales, such as Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming, these ZEV states had 1.3 to 13 times the EV sales shares of the non-ZEV states, and 1.3 to 7.5 more models available.

Overall, EV sales shares in ZEV states in 2023 were higher than non-ZEV states, as shown in Figure 3. California had the highest EV market share in 2023 with a 26.4% sales share. When California is excluded, the EV sales share of total LDV sales in ZEV states was around 12.0%, twice the percentage observed in non-ZEV states of around 6.1%.

U.S. state clean vehicle standards