New EV Sales In America Have Nearly Quintupled Since 2020

Image: Polestar

There has been a lot of doom and gloom about EV adoption slowing down in the U.S. market lately. Sure, the electric segment hasn’t exploded here like it has in other countries, but just under 1.2 million new EVs were sold in 2023, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. A record 7.6 percent of all new cars sold in this country last year were electric. It’s worth keeping in mind that the modern era of the electric car began in earnest just 14 years ago. A lot has happened in 14 years, and a lot more will happen in the next 14.

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The official number of electric vehicles sold in 2023 being reported by KBB is 1,189,051. Compare that to just 252,548 battery-electric vehicles sold in 2020, and you’re looking at a 470 percent increase in just three years time. BEV market share back in 2020 was just 1.8 percent. Tesla was still the market leader for the U.S. in 2023, selling 654,888 units in this country, but while it accounted for 79.4 percent of BEV registrations in 2020, it now holds just 55 percent of the BEV market in 2023. In spite of Elon Musk and his ridiculous antics, the Model Y is still the most popular EV in America, making up around 33 percent of all EVs sold last year.

The EV market in the U.S. is continuing to grow, but that growth is starting to show some signs of slowing down. In the fourth quarter of 2023, EVs set yet another quarterly sales record for both volume and share, hitting 317,168 units and 8.1 percent of the market. However the growth rate year-over-year slowed slightly across the four quarters of last year.

This slowing growth might not be quite as bad as some are claiming it is. The U.S. EV market is on track to hit a projected 10 percent of the overall new car market in 2024. As new, and hopefully cheaper, models hit the market this year, options will continue to make sense for some people and not for others, and that’s okay.