Add plug-in hybrids and the U.S. bought a record 1.4 million rechargeable cars last year.
Jan 18, 2024 at 5:06pm ET
Plug-in electric car sales in the United States significantly increased in 2023, reaching a new record volume and market share.
According to Argonne National Laboratory’s report, in December some 141,055 rechargeable cars were sold (including 100,928 all-electric and 40,127 plug-in hybrids), which is over 9.8% of the total light-duty vehicle sales. The year-over-year growth amounted to 42%.
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Almost 5 million plug-in cars in the U.S.
The cumulative number of plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. between December 2010 and December 2023 amounted to about 4.7 million. This includes 1.4 million sold in 2023.
In 2023, more than 1.4 million plug-in electric cars were sold in the U.S. (up over 50% year-over-year), which is also 9.1% of the total volume (compared to 6.8% a year ago).
As we can see in the graph from the DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office, the highest market share of plug-ins was achieved in September 2023 (9.9%).
An interesting finding is that, in each month of 2023, the share was 8% or higher, while in 2022, it never exceeded 8%. Nonetheless, the numbers are still much lower than in Europe or China.
The all-electric car sales are estimated at 1.1 million units (up 48% year-over-year) or almost 80% of all plug-ins. That’s a new record.
BEVs accounted for about 7% of the market. Tesla represents more than half of the entire all-electric car segment in the U.S. (plus some shares associated with other EV-only start-ups), so we can assume that the average share of all-electric cars among other automakers is around 3%.
It will be interesting to see whether in 2024 we will see a significant increase in BEV sales to a level of 1.5-2 million units.
