These states had the fewest plug-in vehicle registrations last year

How many plug-in vehicles do you think are on the road where you live? If you live in Mississippi or North Dakota, you might be lucky to catch a glimpse of one on your daily commute. Energy.gov’s most recent Fact of the Week (FOTW) highlighted plug-in vehicle (including PHEVs and full EVs) registration numbers, and the number of states where they represented less than half a percent might surprise you.

Ten states had a plug-in vehicle registration share of less than 0.5% as of December 2023. The five lowest were:

Louisiana: 0.3% plug-in registration share
West Virginia: 0.28%
Wyoming: 0.28%
North Dakota: 0.20%
Mississippi: 0.19%

If you only looked at those states, it’d be easy to assume the worst about plug-in vehicle sales and adoption, but several others put up much greater registration numbers. California had 4.3%, followed by the District of Columbia with 3.52%. Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon completed the top five.

Additionally, Argonne National Laboratory, which provided the data for the FOTW, found that the 2023 calendar year saw a record number of plug-in vehicle sales. More than 1.4 million were sold last year, a jump of over 50% from 2022. The vast majority of them – 80% – were EVs. Overall market share increased to 9.3% in 2023, up from 6.8 percent the year before.

This data is interesting for a variety of reasons, including that it illustrates what we’ve been hearing about EVs for a while now. The states with the smallest share of plug-in registrations all fall on the red end of the political spectrum, while the five with the most are on the opposite side of the aisle.

The numbers also show that geography and population density matter.  States like Wyoming and North Dakota are extremely sparsely populated and need more robust charging and support infrastructure that places like California and D.C. have.