Mapped: Electric Vehicle Adoption by State

Visual Capitalist ^ | 08/22/2024 | Bruno Venditti

[SeekAndFind]

In 2023, sales of electric vehicles (EVs) passed the 1.6 million mark.

To visualize where EVs are the most popular, Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti maps the number of registered EVs per 100,000 people by state as of June 2024.

The vehicle registration data is sourced from the U.S. Department of Energy, while population data is from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Only all-electric vehicles are included on the map.

California Leads EV Adoption

California has the highest number of electric vehicles, with 1.1 million. Florida follows with 231,000 EVs, and Texas ranks third with 210,000.

When considering EVs per 100,000 people, California also leads with 3,026 cars per 100,000 people, followed by Washington, Hawaii, and Oregon.

U.S. State	EVs per 100k people
California	3026
Washington	1805
Hawaii	1686
Oregon	1422
Colorado	1405
Nevada	1379
New Jersey	1349
Arizona	1139
Vermont	1129
District of Columbia	1115
Utah	1078
Maryland	1050
Florida	1024
Massachusetts	983
Connecticut	818
Georgia	771
Delaware	745
Illinois	741
Texas	690
New Hampshire	660
New York	622
Minnesota	591
North Carolina	589
Oklahoma	564
Rhode Island	542
Pennsylvania	499
Maine	489
Michigan	454
New Mexico	452
Tennessee	428
Idaho	406
Missouri	398
Ohio	391
Montana	373
South Carolina	358
Kansas	354
Indiana	350
Alaska	346
Nebraska	319
Iowa	260
Kentucky	238
Alabama	232
Arkansas	214
South Dakota	169
Louisiana	165
North Dakota	112
Mississippi	110

Mississippi has the fewest electric vehicles proportionally, with only 110 EVs per 100,000 people. North Dakota has a similar lack of EVs, with 112 per 100,000 people in the state.

Additionally, California has the highest number of EV charging stations, with over 15,000, making up 29% of all charging stations in America. As of 2022, the Golden State had nearly double the number of chargers compared to the next three states combined: New York, Florida, and Texas.

If you liked this post, check out Ranked: The Top 10 EV Battery Manufacturers in 2023. In this graphic we rank the top 10 EV battery manufacturers by total battery deployment (measured in megawatt-hours) in 2023.

[CatOwner]

With the number of Teslas I see on the road, in parking lots, and in driveways here in Central Texas, I think the Texas number might be a bit low on this graphic.

[laplata]

Unless I missed it, Wyoming is not on the list. My daughter who lives in Wyoming told me she has only noticed one EV and it had Colo. plates.

[Tell It Right]

It amazes me how many more people up north (where it’s freezing cold) have EV’s than in the south. It seems that EV’s are one of those products that are bought with little thought to if it’s practical for their situation.

[lurk]

So even in collectivist CA, only 3% drive an EV.

And the numbers nationwide are going to fall, as EV owners will not be repeating buying.

[granite]

I would think it takes more energy to cool than to heat a vehicle. They may take heat from the motors to warm the compartment, but that is just a guess.

[crusty old prospector]

I see a handful of Teslas in my town. But I ain’t in Austin, Dallas, or Houston. The ones I know of are doctors. Virtue signaling.

[Steely Tom]

I would think it takes more energy to cool than to heat a vehicle. They may take heat from the motors to warm the compartment, but that is just a guess.

Whether it takes more energy or not is not the main issue (I think it's probably about the same amount of energy for both).

To heat the car, it takes... heat. And for an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, you've already got a ton of heat available for free. Waste heat. Heat that has to be removed from the engine to keep it from melting; this is done by the engines... wait for it... cooling system.

That heat is literally free. You've got to get rid of way more of it than is required to heat the passenger spaces of the car. You can keep the passengers toasty warm by just diverting 15 or 20% of the waste heat that would have been dissipated by the radiator into a little separate radiator that warms the air that goes into the passenger space.

To cool air takes energy, but not heat. It takes mechanical power, shaft power. Shaft power you get from ... heat. But to turn heat into shaft power, you've got to deal with Maxwell's Demon, Carnot's Equation, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, things like that.

Net result: in order to generate a horsepower of shaft power (to spin the A/C compressor), you need to generate three or four (maybe even five) horsepower of heat, that you still have to throw away using the radiator. And don't you dare let any of that get into the passenger spaces.

So you get the heat for free, and you've got to pay several times over - in terms of fuel usage - for the cool.

In an electric vehicle, you've got to pay several times over for both. You don't get nearly enough heat to keep the passengers warm in the winter from waste heat generated by the energy. That waste heat went into a lake near the distant electricity generating plant that made the juice to charge the EV battery. It's just wasted. You don't get to take advantage of it at all.

To get the cool, you've still got to spin the A/C compressor shaft, but you're doing that with electric power from the battery. Small potatoes next to what the drive motor(s) are using, but still nothing to sneeze at.

[drwoof]

Would be interesting to see a breakdown of ownership by race...

[FLT-bird]

So aside from Left Coasters, hardly anybody else wants these things.

[EnderWiggin1970]

Someone in Cheyenne had one and blogged about the adventures of trying to use it around the state. Took them 12 hours to get to Lander. It seems an absurdity to have an electric vehicle in a cold, no-big-cities, large-distances state like Montana or Wyoming.

[Charles Martel]

Biden's EV push has been about as successful as Obama's similar E85 and Biodiesel mandate. They can't even get the fedgov motor pool vehicles switched over convincingly, apart from a few select locations which were done mostly for show, at massive taxpayer expense.

I have some anecdotal evidence regarding the money involved, courtesy of an old college friend who works as a building engineer in a Dallas high-rise office building. His building leases office space to several federal agencies (apparently, the nearby federal building is full to capacity), and the agencies have been trying to get the General Services Administration to install EV chargers in the garage. Just two Level-2, 240v, 50 amp double-port chargers, installed ... maybe 30 feet from a breaker panel with plenty of remaining capacity. So, just a straight run of conduit and wiring, two new circuit breakers, the charging stations (about $9K each), plus permits, insurance, labor, etc.

The bid estimate from GSA came in a bit under $150,000.00.

[laplata]

👍

[Rockingham]

Here in the Orlando area, Teslas can be most reliably found in the parking lots at Whole Foods and other grocery stores in affluent areas and in parking slots used by college faculties and medical doctors.

[HIDEK6]

I used to play in a big band that had a regular Monday night gig. After every gig, I had to take one of the sax players four miles down the road so that he could reclaim his Tesla from a government charging station.

[BobL]

The REAL WAY to do this survey is to list the rate of ownership of ONLY electric vehicles, no gasoline vehicles. In other words, if a family owns 1 of each, they’re not counted, as the EV only exists for that family to be able to Virtue Signal. But if a family owns 1, 2, or more EVs, but no gasoline cars, then they have, actually, ‘transitioned’ to EVs.

[BobL]

“The bid estimate from GSA came in a bit under $150,000.00.”

Union boys.

[Rockingham]

For what its worth, I believe that Tesla and Musk will soon come out big winners. A supposed practical cold fusion device ready for market and known as an ECAT will be demonstrated in an EV and in solar power generation in October. I surmise that the EV to be used in the test will be a Tesla, with ECATs thereafter available to generate near limitless electric power in Teslas and power for homes set up with batteries and control circuits as part of Musk's solar cell set up or simply to accommodate ECATs.

I know, it sounds crazy, cold fusion suddenly pops up to revolutionize electric power generation -- and Musk is the big winner as the first to ride the wave. Yet Musk seems to have a plan that assumes Tesla and his solar cell business will soon come up roses and be bulletproof in a business sense. I surmise that is part of why Musk moved on Twitter and into political issues -- and aligned with Trump no less.

[Fresh Wind]

I see loads of Teslas around here, but most of them are sitting unpurchased in a Tesla dealership lot.

[butlerweave]

You do know a ton on EV numbers about EVs are false