With 21.4% of new cars in California being electric, the state set a new record last year. Once again, Tesla led the way with the two best-selling models, the Model Y and Model 3. However, Tesla is closing in on Toyota as the state’s best-selling brand, and Toyota just managed to hold onto its position.
In California, EV sales accounted for 21.4% of the total, compared to a 7.5% national market share. However, a few years ago, new EV sales in California were down almost 7%, while sales in the rest of the nation were down approximately 2%.
However, California’s proportion of BEV registrations nationwide decreased. In the past, California accounted for almost half of all EV sales in the US; however, by 2023, California accounted for 33.8% of all BEV sales in the US. This indicates that EV sales are starting to gather up steam throughout the nation.
Leading the pack, as expected, were Tesla’s vehicles. The Model Y and Model 3 both outsold the competition by a wide margin – with Model 3 holding a 15.3% share in passenger cars (a 61% lead over the Toyota Camry) and Model Y holding a 10.8% share in light trucks, more than double its highest challenger, the RAV4, with a 4.7% share. 13% means that one out of every 8 vehicles sold in California last year was a Tesla – from a company in just its 15th year of selling cars anywhere.
However, as other manufacturers have finally launched their BEV programmes and are now offering a variety of vehicles, many of which have only recently entered the market, we can see a growing number of BEVs being sold by franchised dealers in the chart. Franchised dealers are starting to overtake direct sales of BEVs.
Between BEVs, PHEVs, and FCEVs, a full quarter of vehicles could access some sort of dedicated non-combustive energy source.
The reason for this was the decrease in the share of electric vehicles from 22.3% to 21.1% in the quarter and the increase in the share of hybrids from 11.7% to 13.3%. Plug-in hybrids have been boosted by the extraordinary popularity of the Jeep Wrangler PHEV, which is the fourth best-selling plug-in vehicle in the state behind the two Teslas and the outgoing Chevy Bolt.
Tesla maintained its position as one of the companies with the best sales growth over the course of the year, up 24.6% from the previous year.
Tesla’s share of California’s BEV market dropped from 71% to 60.5%, another expected result of other vehicles entering the market. This was still higher than Tesla’s share of the overall US EV market.
And with that, electric cars will make up 16.4 percent of California’s electric car market in 2022, up from 21.4 percent in 2023. It definitely feels like an increase to me, not a decrease. Meanwhile, one media story we haven’t heard much about is how ICE sales aren’t really growing.
With total car sales in California growing 11.9% in 2023, 190,000 more electrified vehicles (BEV/PHEV/HEV) were sold in 2023 than in 2022, for a total of ~638,000 in 2023, during car sales alone, vehicles with internal combustion. the engine, was approximately 1.1 million. So in a year where the auto industry saw a considerable recovery, most of the recovery, at least in California, came from increased sales of electric cars.
