California: Plug-In Car Sales Increased To Nearly 350,000 In 2022

Nearly a fifth of new cars sold in California were rechargeable last year.

By: Mark Kane

Jan 26, 2023 at 8:41am ET

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Plug-in electric car sales in California noticeably increased in 2022, reaching new record levels - both in terms of volume and market share.

According to the California Energy Commission's data, some 345,818 new zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) were sold last year in California, which is 38 percent more than a year ago and 138 percent more than in 2020.

*Zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) are battery-electric vehicles (BEV) or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV), but the California Energy Commission also includes in the number plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV), which are zero-emission only in the EV mode.

The 345,818 ZEVs accounted for 18.8 percent of the total number of 1,835,429 light-duty vehicle sales in 2022. It means nearly one in five new cars.

California continues to be the largest market for ZEV vehicles in the United States, with a share of 40 percent.

If we take a look into the details, it turns out that some 343,244 plug-in cars (BEVs and PHEVs) were sold in 2022, while hydrogen cars noted just 2,574 units.

Plug-in car sales in California in 2022:

BEVs: 292,496
PHEVs 50,748
FCVs: 2,574
Total: 345,818 (up 38% year-over-year) and 18.8% share

Cumulatively, more than 1,385,000 plug-in cars were sold within the state (the level of 1 million units was surpassed in early 2022).

Simultaneously, the cumulative number of installed charging points (public and shared private, of various types) exceeded 80,000.

Cumulative Plug-in car sales in California:

BEVs: 955,510
PHEVs 429,873
FCVs: 14,530
Total: 1,399,913

Models

In terms of models, the two most popular ones were the Tesla Model 3 (94,683) and Tesla Model Y (93,872). Overall Tesla noted 212,586 units (four models), which is 72.7 percent of all BEVs.

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The other popular models were the Chevrolet Bolt EV/EUV duo (12,710), Ford Mustang Mach-E (9,860) and Hyundai Ioniq 5 (7,519). A very interesting thing is that next is the Jeep Wrangler 4xe (6,936), which happened to be the top PHEV, slightly ahead of the Toyota Prius Prime.

Top plug-in car models in California in 2022 (above 5,000 units):